NEW YORK
Election type: primary
Date: June 23
[April 28 originally]
Number of delegates: 324 [61 at-large, 29 PLEOs, 184 congressional district, 50 automatic/superdelegates]
Allocation method: proportional statewide and at the congressional district level
Threshold to qualify for delegates: 15%
2016: proportional primary
Delegate selection plan (post-coronavirus)
--
Changes since 2016
If one followed the 2016 series on the Republican process here at FHQ, then you may end up somewhat disappointed. The two national parties manage the presidential nomination process differently. The Republican National Committee is much less hands-on in regulating state and state party activity in the delegate selection process than the Democratic National Committee is. That leads to a lot of variation from state to state and from cycle to cycle on the Republican side. Meanwhile, the DNC is much more top down in its approach. Thresholds stay the same. It is a 15 percent barrier that candidates must cross in order to qualify for delegates. That is standard across all states. The allocation of delegates is roughly proportional. Again, that is applied to every state.
That does not mean there are no changes. The calendar has changed as have other facets of the process such as whether a state has a primary or a caucus.
New York Democrats saw a number of changes both before and after the coronavirus pandemic wreaked havoc on the Empire state. In the time since 2016 and before the calendar flipped to 2020, the New York state legislature in 2019 shifted the primary back a week from the mid-April position it held alone in 2016 to the final Tuesday in April alongside a group of five other neighboring states.
But after the coronavirus hit in earnest in March 2020 and hit especially hard in New York state, Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) first pushed the primary back to June 23 and then issued an executive order requiring county elections officials to mail absentee ballot applications (with postage-paid return) to all eligible New York voters. However, days later, acting on the new powers granted it under a new provision in a budget bill signed into law, the New York State Board of Elections opted to cancel the June 23 presidential primary. [For more on the further empowerment of the Board of Elections in this scenario, see this post on the maneuvering after the cancelation.] That move was challenged in federal court. And first the district court reversed the cancelation and then the court of appeals upheld that decision, ushering back in the June 23 presidential primary.
The state did not appeal that court of appeals decision, cementing the presidential primary on June 23. Voters will now have until June 16 -- a week before the the primary -- to have their ballot requests in to county elections offices in order to receive their ballot in time for the election.
All ballots are then due to county elections offices postmarked on or before Monday, June 22, or delivered in person by election day on June 23.
Overall, the Democratic delegation in New York changed by 29 delegates from 2016 to 2020. Since the last Democratic nomination four years ago, Democrats in the Empire state added 21 district delegates, seven at-large delegates and two superdelegates. The only category of delegates to shrink since 2016 was the group of PLEO delegates that decreased by one delegate. Most of the gains came from New York having rejoined the Acela primary group of states -- originally in late April -- and tacking on a 15 percent clustering bonus from the DNC. New York was a part of the group in 2012, but went a week earlier than the rest in 2016.
[Please see below for more on the post-coronavirus changes specifically to the delegate selection process.]
Thresholds
The standard 15 percent qualifying threshold applies both statewide and on the congressional district level.
Delegate allocation (at-large and PLEO delegates)
To win any at-large or PLEO (pledged Party Leader and Elected Officials) delegates a candidate must win 15 percent of the statewide vote. Only the votes of those candidates above the threshold will count for the purposes of the separate allocation of these two pools of delegates.
See New Hampshire synopsis for an example of how the delegate allocation math works for all categories of delegates.
Delegate allocation (congressional district delegates)
New York's 184 congressional district delegates are split across 27 congressional districts and have a variation of just two delegates across districts from the measure of Democratic strength Empire state Democrats are using based on the results of the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections in the state. That method apportions delegates as follows...
CD1 - 6 delegates
CD2 - 6 delegates
CD3 - 7 delegates*
CD4 - 7 delegates*
CD5 - 8 delegates
CD6 - 6 delegates
CD7 - 7 delegates*
CD8 - 8 delegates
CD9 - 8 delegates
CD10 - 7 delegates*
CD11 - 6 delegates
CD12 - 8 delegates
CD13 - 8 delegates
CD14 - 6 delegates
CD15 - 7 delegates*
CD16 - 8 delegates
CD17 - 7 delegates*
CD18 - 6 delegates
CD19 - 6 delegates
CD20 - 7 delegates*
CD21 - 6 delegates
CD22 - 6 delegates
CD23 - 6 delegates
CD24 - 7 delegates*
CD25 - 7 delegates*
CD26 - 7 delegates*
CD27 - 6 delegates
*Bear in mind that districts with odd numbers of national convention delegates are potentially important to winners (and those above the qualifying threshold) within those districts. Rounding up for an extra delegate initially requires less in those districts than in districts with even numbers of delegates.
Delegate allocation (automatic delegates/superdelegates)
Superdelegates are free to align with a candidate of their choice at a time of their choosing. While their support may be a signal to voters in their state (if an endorsement is made before voting in that state), superdelegates will only vote on the first ballot at the national convention if half of the total number of delegates -- pledged plus superdelegates -- have been pledged to one candidate. Otherwise, superdelegates are locked out of the voting unless 1) the convention adopts rules that allow them to vote or 2) the voting process extends to a second ballot. But then all delegates, not just superdelegates will be free to vote for any candidate.
[NOTE: All Democratic delegates are pledged and not bound to their candidates. They are to vote in good conscience for the candidate to whom they have been pledged, but technically do not have to. But they tend to because the candidates and their campaigns are involved in vetting and selecting their delegates through the various selection processes on the state level. Well, the good campaigns are anyway.]
Selection
The 184 district delegates will still be directly elected on the New York Democratic presidential primary ballot, but now that primary will take place on June 23. Similarly, the state convention -- some time in July -- will continue to be the body that selects both the PLEO and then at-large delegates. But it is noteworthy that the New York Democratic Party state convention is a state convention in name only, at least as compared to how most other states conduct state conventions. The typical state convention is comprised of a group of delegates who are selected at more local caucuses or conventions during primary season. The New York Democratic state convention is alternatively just the state central committee. In essence, then, it is a meeting of the committee rather than a convention of delegates. However, each campaign will have at least one member representing them on the nominating committee at the convention.
[Under the originally approved and compliant delegate selection plan, New York Democrats would still have directly elected their district delegates on the primary ballot. That remains the case, but that would have taken place on April 28, before the primary moved back to June. Likewise, the PLEO and at-large delegates would have been chosen at the state convention that was planned for May 12.]
Importantly, if a candidate drops out of the race before the selection of statewide delegates, then any statewide delegates allocated to that candidate will be reallocated to the remaining candidates. If Candidate X is in the race in July when the New York statewide delegate selection takes place but Candidate Y is not, then any statewide delegates allocated to Candidate Y in the late June primary would be reallocated to Candidate X. [This same feature is not something that applies to district delegates.] This reallocation only applies if a candidate has fully dropped out. This is less likely to be a factor with just Biden left as the only viable candidate in the race, but Sanders could still gain statewide delegates by finishing with more than 15 percent statewide. Under a new deal struck between the Biden and Sanders camps, Biden will be allocated (or reallocated) all of the statewide delegates in a given state. However, during the selection process, the state party will select Sanders-aligned delegate candidates in proportion to the share of the qualified statewide vote.
Monday, June 1, 2020
Sunday, May 31, 2020
2020 Democratic Delegate Allocation: KENTUCKY
KENTUCKY
Election type: primary
Date: June 23
[May 19 originally]
Number of delegates: 60 [12 at-large, 6 PLEOs, 36 congressional district, 6 automatic/superdelegates]
Allocation method: proportional statewide and at the congressional district level
Threshold to qualify for delegates: 15%
2016: proportional primary
Delegate selection plan (pre-coronavirus)
[Summary of changes, post-coronavirus]
--
Changes since 2016
If one followed the 2016 series on the Republican process here at FHQ, then you may end up somewhat disappointed. The two national parties manage the presidential nomination process differently. The Republican National Committee is much less hands-on in regulating state and state party activity in the delegate selection process than the Democratic National Committee is. That leads to a lot of variation from state to state and from cycle to cycle on the Republican side. Meanwhile, the DNC is much more top down in its approach. Thresholds stay the same. It is a 15 percent barrier that candidates must cross in order to qualify for delegates. That is standard across all states. The allocation of delegates is roughly proportional. Again, that is applied to every state.
That does not mean there are no changes. The calendar has changed as have other facets of the process such as whether a state has a primary or a caucus.
It was a quiet time in Kentucky after 2016, at least so far as the presidential primary and other delegate selection changes (especially on the Democratic side) were concerned. There was no effort to move or break up the consolidated primary scheduled for mid-May during the period from late 2016 through 2019.
But once the coronavirus pandemic came on the scene, Kentucky, like other states, changed the plans that had been laid out well in advance. On the state government level, Secretary of State Michael Adams (R) moved the primary from the May position it has been in since the 1992 cycle to June 23. And in a deal struck with Governor Andy Beshear (D), Adams also extended absentee voting to all registered Kentuckians. Postcards indicating the new voting option were mailed to all voters and an online application was created to allow all voters to request an absentee ballot. This is similar to the changes made in neighboring Ohio. Information about the change in voting was distributed, but not either absentee voting applications nor ballots were mailed directly to voters.
All ballots are due to county elections offices on or before 6pm on Tuesday, June 23.
Overall, the Democratic delegation in Kentucky changed by just one delegate from 2016 to 2020. Over the last four years, only the district delegates decreased by one while the remaining two categories of pledged delegates and superdelegates stayed the same.
[Please see below for more on the post-coronavirus changes specifically to the Kentucky Democratic Party delegate selection process.]
Thresholds
The standard 15 percent qualifying threshold applies both statewide and on the congressional district level.
Delegate allocation (at-large and PLEO delegates)
To win any at-large or PLEO (pledged Party Leader and Elected Officials) delegates a candidate must win 15 percent of the statewide vote. Only the votes of those candidates above the threshold will count for the purposes of the separate allocation of these two pools of delegates.
See New Hampshire synopsis for an example of how the delegate allocation math works for all categories of delegates.
Delegate allocation (congressional district delegates)
Kentucky's 36 congressional district delegates are split across 6 congressional districts and have a fairly wide variation of seven delegates across districts based on the measure of Democratic strength the state party is using determined by the results of the 2016 presidential and 2019 gubernatorial elections in the state. That method apportions delegates as follows...
CD1 - 4 delegates
CD2 - 5 delegates*
CD3 - 10 delegates
CD4 - 6 delegates
CD5 - 3 delegates*
CD6 - 8 delegates
*Bear in mind that districts with odd numbers of national convention delegates are potentially important to winners (and those above the qualifying threshold) within those districts. Rounding up for an extra delegate initially requires less in those districts than in districts with even numbers of delegates.
Delegate allocation (automatic delegates/superdelegates)
Superdelegates are free to align with a candidate of their choice at a time of their choosing. While their support may be a signal to voters in their state (if an endorsement is made before voting in that state), superdelegates will only vote on the first ballot at the national convention if half of the total number of delegates -- pledged plus superdelegates -- have been pledged to one candidate. Otherwise, superdelegates are locked out of the voting unless 1) the convention adopts rules that allow them to vote or 2) the voting process extends to a second ballot. But then all delegates, not just superdelegates will be free to vote for any candidate.
[NOTE: All Democratic delegates are pledged and not bound to their candidates. They are to vote in good conscience for the candidate to whom they have been pledged, but technically do not have to. But they tend to because the candidates and their campaigns are involved in vetting and selecting their delegates through the various selection processes on the state level. Well, the good campaigns are anyway.]
Selection
As it has elsewhere, the outbreak of the coronavirus has disrupted the delegate selection process in Kentucky. County/legislative district caucuses have been eliminated under the new plan and all registered Kentucky Democrats can remotely participate in the selection of district delegates. Any Kentucky Democrat can apply with the state party by June 6 to participate via Google Forms ballot in the pre-primary selection of district delegates that takes place from June 7-13. As this is a pre-primary election, delegate slates will be selected for participating candidates and delegate slots allocated on primary election day will be filled from those slates.
Both PLEO and then at-large delegates will be selected by the State Executive Committee on June 27 (if the results of the June 23 primary have been certified by that time).
[Initially, before the coronavirus pandemic hit, Kentucky Democrats had planned to hold post-primary county/legislative district caucuses on May 30 to select delegates to the state convention on June 6. State convention delegates broken into congressional districts were to have chosen district delegates there and the full convention would have selected the PLEO delegates. Following the conclusion of the June 6 state convention, the Kentucky Democratic Party State Executive Committee was to have selected the at-large delegates to go to the national convention from the commonwealth.]
Importantly, if a candidate drops out of the race before the selection of statewide delegates, then any statewide delegates allocated to that candidate will be reallocated to the remaining candidates. If Candidate X is in the race in late June when the Georgia statewide delegate selection takes place but Candidate Y is not, then any statewide delegates allocated to Candidate Y in the late June primary would be reallocated to Candidate X. [This same feature is not something that applies to district delegates.] This reallocation only applies if a candidate has fully dropped out. This is less likely to be a factor with just Biden left as the only viable candidate in the race, but Sanders could still gain statewide delegates by finishing with more than 15 percent statewide. Under a new deal struck between the Biden and Sanders camps, Biden will be allocated (or reallocated) all of the statewide delegates in a given state. However, during the selection process, the state party will select Sanders-aligned delegate candidates in proportion to the share of the qualified statewide vote.
Election type: primary
Date: June 23
[May 19 originally]
Number of delegates: 60 [12 at-large, 6 PLEOs, 36 congressional district, 6 automatic/superdelegates]
Allocation method: proportional statewide and at the congressional district level
Threshold to qualify for delegates: 15%
2016: proportional primary
Delegate selection plan (pre-coronavirus)
[Summary of changes, post-coronavirus]
--
Changes since 2016
If one followed the 2016 series on the Republican process here at FHQ, then you may end up somewhat disappointed. The two national parties manage the presidential nomination process differently. The Republican National Committee is much less hands-on in regulating state and state party activity in the delegate selection process than the Democratic National Committee is. That leads to a lot of variation from state to state and from cycle to cycle on the Republican side. Meanwhile, the DNC is much more top down in its approach. Thresholds stay the same. It is a 15 percent barrier that candidates must cross in order to qualify for delegates. That is standard across all states. The allocation of delegates is roughly proportional. Again, that is applied to every state.
That does not mean there are no changes. The calendar has changed as have other facets of the process such as whether a state has a primary or a caucus.
It was a quiet time in Kentucky after 2016, at least so far as the presidential primary and other delegate selection changes (especially on the Democratic side) were concerned. There was no effort to move or break up the consolidated primary scheduled for mid-May during the period from late 2016 through 2019.
But once the coronavirus pandemic came on the scene, Kentucky, like other states, changed the plans that had been laid out well in advance. On the state government level, Secretary of State Michael Adams (R) moved the primary from the May position it has been in since the 1992 cycle to June 23. And in a deal struck with Governor Andy Beshear (D), Adams also extended absentee voting to all registered Kentuckians. Postcards indicating the new voting option were mailed to all voters and an online application was created to allow all voters to request an absentee ballot. This is similar to the changes made in neighboring Ohio. Information about the change in voting was distributed, but not either absentee voting applications nor ballots were mailed directly to voters.
All ballots are due to county elections offices on or before 6pm on Tuesday, June 23.
Overall, the Democratic delegation in Kentucky changed by just one delegate from 2016 to 2020. Over the last four years, only the district delegates decreased by one while the remaining two categories of pledged delegates and superdelegates stayed the same.
[Please see below for more on the post-coronavirus changes specifically to the Kentucky Democratic Party delegate selection process.]
Thresholds
The standard 15 percent qualifying threshold applies both statewide and on the congressional district level.
Delegate allocation (at-large and PLEO delegates)
To win any at-large or PLEO (pledged Party Leader and Elected Officials) delegates a candidate must win 15 percent of the statewide vote. Only the votes of those candidates above the threshold will count for the purposes of the separate allocation of these two pools of delegates.
See New Hampshire synopsis for an example of how the delegate allocation math works for all categories of delegates.
Delegate allocation (congressional district delegates)
Kentucky's 36 congressional district delegates are split across 6 congressional districts and have a fairly wide variation of seven delegates across districts based on the measure of Democratic strength the state party is using determined by the results of the 2016 presidential and 2019 gubernatorial elections in the state. That method apportions delegates as follows...
CD1 - 4 delegates
CD2 - 5 delegates*
CD3 - 10 delegates
CD4 - 6 delegates
CD5 - 3 delegates*
CD6 - 8 delegates
*Bear in mind that districts with odd numbers of national convention delegates are potentially important to winners (and those above the qualifying threshold) within those districts. Rounding up for an extra delegate initially requires less in those districts than in districts with even numbers of delegates.
Delegate allocation (automatic delegates/superdelegates)
Superdelegates are free to align with a candidate of their choice at a time of their choosing. While their support may be a signal to voters in their state (if an endorsement is made before voting in that state), superdelegates will only vote on the first ballot at the national convention if half of the total number of delegates -- pledged plus superdelegates -- have been pledged to one candidate. Otherwise, superdelegates are locked out of the voting unless 1) the convention adopts rules that allow them to vote or 2) the voting process extends to a second ballot. But then all delegates, not just superdelegates will be free to vote for any candidate.
[NOTE: All Democratic delegates are pledged and not bound to their candidates. They are to vote in good conscience for the candidate to whom they have been pledged, but technically do not have to. But they tend to because the candidates and their campaigns are involved in vetting and selecting their delegates through the various selection processes on the state level. Well, the good campaigns are anyway.]
Selection
As it has elsewhere, the outbreak of the coronavirus has disrupted the delegate selection process in Kentucky. County/legislative district caucuses have been eliminated under the new plan and all registered Kentucky Democrats can remotely participate in the selection of district delegates. Any Kentucky Democrat can apply with the state party by June 6 to participate via Google Forms ballot in the pre-primary selection of district delegates that takes place from June 7-13. As this is a pre-primary election, delegate slates will be selected for participating candidates and delegate slots allocated on primary election day will be filled from those slates.
Both PLEO and then at-large delegates will be selected by the State Executive Committee on June 27 (if the results of the June 23 primary have been certified by that time).
[Initially, before the coronavirus pandemic hit, Kentucky Democrats had planned to hold post-primary county/legislative district caucuses on May 30 to select delegates to the state convention on June 6. State convention delegates broken into congressional districts were to have chosen district delegates there and the full convention would have selected the PLEO delegates. Following the conclusion of the June 6 state convention, the Kentucky Democratic Party State Executive Committee was to have selected the at-large delegates to go to the national convention from the commonwealth.]
Importantly, if a candidate drops out of the race before the selection of statewide delegates, then any statewide delegates allocated to that candidate will be reallocated to the remaining candidates. If Candidate X is in the race in late June when the Georgia statewide delegate selection takes place but Candidate Y is not, then any statewide delegates allocated to Candidate Y in the late June primary would be reallocated to Candidate X. [This same feature is not something that applies to district delegates.] This reallocation only applies if a candidate has fully dropped out. This is less likely to be a factor with just Biden left as the only viable candidate in the race, but Sanders could still gain statewide delegates by finishing with more than 15 percent statewide. Under a new deal struck between the Biden and Sanders camps, Biden will be allocated (or reallocated) all of the statewide delegates in a given state. However, during the selection process, the state party will select Sanders-aligned delegate candidates in proportion to the share of the qualified statewide vote.
Saturday, May 30, 2020
2020 Democratic Delegate Allocation: WEST VIRGINIA
WEST VIRGINIA
Election type: primary
Date: June 9
[May 12 originally]
Number of delegates: 34 [6 at-large, 3 PLEOs, 19 congressional district, 6 automatic/superdelegates]
Allocation method: proportional statewide and at the congressional district level
Threshold to qualify for delegates: 15%
2016: proportional primary
Delegate selection plan (post-coronavirus)
--
Changes since 2016
If one followed the 2016 series on the Republican process here at FHQ, then you may end up somewhat disappointed. The two national parties manage the presidential nomination process differently. The Republican National Committee is much less hands-on in regulating state and state party activity in the delegate selection process than the Democratic National Committee is. That leads to a lot of variation from state to state and from cycle to cycle on the Republican side. Meanwhile, the DNC is much more top down in its approach. Thresholds stay the same. It is a 15 percent barrier that candidates must cross in order to qualify for delegates. That is standard across all states. The allocation of delegates is roughly proportional. Again, that is applied to every state.
That does not mean there are no changes. The calendar has changed as have other facets of the process such as whether a state has a primary or a caucus.
Other than Mountain state Republicans changing to a February convention for the 2008 cycle, West Virginia delegate allocation has happened in May since the 1988 cycle. That did not change in the lead up to 2020. However, there was a short-lived and unsuccessful effort in 2017 to move the West Virginia primary to the second Friday in February. That obviously would have conflicted with the national party rules on the timing of primaries and caucuses and died in committee.
However, there were changes to the ways in which West Virginia will conduct its 2020 primary triggered by the coronavirus. The initial response by Secretary of State Mac Warner (R) was to keep the primary on May 12 but work with county elections clerks to mail absentee vote-by-mail applications to all eligible West Virginia voters. But that was followed in quick succession at the beginning of April by an executive order from Governor Jim Justice (R) moving the primary back four weeks to June 9.
There will still be a ten day window for in-person early voting from May 27-June 6 and in-person election day voting remains an option as well. But the secretary of state is expecting record vote-by-mail numbers. Typically only 3 percent of West Virginians have voted in that manner in the past, but a little more than 20 percent had already requested ballots as of May 26. [UPDATE (6/9/20): As of election eve, 21.4 percent of registered voters in West Virginia had requested absentee ballots and 17.2 percent had cast them by June 8 according to the secretary of state in the Mountain state. Another 3 percent had voted during the early voting window.]
All vote-by-mail ballots are due to county elections offices postmarked on or before Tuesday, June 9.
Overall, the Democratic delegation in West Virginia changed by three delegates from 2016 to 2020. Among the categories of pledged delegates, the number of district delegates decreased by one while the totals of PLEO and at-large remained the same as they were four years ago. West Virginia Democrats also lost two superdelegates in that time.
[Please see below for more on the post-coronavirus changes specifically to the delegate selection process.]
Thresholds
The standard 15 percent qualifying threshold applies both statewide and on the congressional district level.
Delegate allocation (at-large and PLEO delegates)
To win any at-large or PLEO (pledged Party Leader and Elected Officials) delegates a candidate must win 15 percent of the statewide vote. Only the votes of those candidates above the threshold will count for the purposes of the separate allocation of these two pools of delegates.
See New Hampshire synopsis for an example of how the delegate allocation math works for all categories of delegates.
Delegate allocation (congressional district delegates)
West Virginia's 19 congressional district delegates are split across three congressional districts and have a variation of four delegates across districts from the measure of Democratic strength Mountain state Democrats are using based on the results of the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections in the state. That method apportions delegates as follows...
CD1 - 6 delegates
CD2 - 7 delegates*
CD3 - 6 delegates
*Bear in mind that districts with odd numbers of national convention delegates are potentially important to winners (and those above the qualifying threshold) within those districts. Rounding up for an extra delegate initially requires less in those districts than in districts with even numbers of delegates.
Delegate allocation (automatic delegates/superdelegates)
Superdelegates are free to align with a candidate of their choice at a time of their choosing. While their support may be a signal to voters in their state (if an endorsement is made before voting in that state), superdelegates will only vote on the first ballot at the national convention if half of the total number of delegates -- pledged plus superdelegates -- have been pledged to one candidate. Otherwise, superdelegates are locked out of the voting unless 1) the convention adopts rules that allow them to vote or 2) the voting process extends to a second ballot. But then all delegates, not just superdelegates will be free to vote for any candidate.
[NOTE: All Democratic delegates are pledged and not bound to their candidates. They are to vote in good conscience for the candidate to whom they have been pledged, but technically do not have to. But they tend to because the candidates and their campaigns are involved in vetting and selecting their delegates through the various selection processes on the state level. Well, the good campaigns are anyway.]
Selection
The selection of the 28 pledged delegates to the national convention in West Virginia will follow a similar trajectory to the plan laid out prior to the outbreak of the coronavirus. But the kick off event -- the county caucuses -- will be later and the whole process will contain more virtual elements than had been the true with the plan originally approved by the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee in 2019. County conventions pushed back to May 16 will occur virtually and select delegates to the state convention. Once those wishing to participate file to do so via Google Forms (with the state party), the state party will electronically distribute ballots on May 13 to be completed by May 16.
Those delegates selected to attend the state convention will then be mailed or emailed ballots for remotely/virtually electing the 19 district delegates starting on May 25. Those ballots will be due to the West Virginia Democratic Party via email, mail or call by June 12.
A day later on June 13, the West Virginia Democratic Party State Executive Committee will convene virtually and select the PLEO and then at-large delegates to the national convention.
The dates of selection for all categories of pledged delegates fall on the same days they were before the coronavirus.
[The original timeline West Virginia Democrats planned to use in order to select delegates to the national convention began with pre-primary county caucuses on March 28. Participants at those county caucuses would have elected delegates to the post-primary state convention on June 12-13. District caucuses at the state convention would have selected the 19 district delegates. Then the PLEO and then at-large delegates would have been selected on June 13 by the West Virginia Democratic Party State Executive Committee.]
Importantly, if a candidate drops out of the race before the selection of statewide delegates, then any statewide delegates allocated to that candidate will be reallocated to the remaining candidates. If Candidate X is in the race in mid-June when the West Virginia statewide delegate selection takes place but Candidate Y is not, then any statewide delegates allocated to Candidate Y in the earlier June primary would be reallocated to Candidate X. [This same feature is not something that applies to district delegates.] This reallocation only applies if a candidate has fully dropped out. This is less likely to be a factor with just Biden left as the only viable candidate in the race, but Sanders could still gain statewide delegates by finishing with more than 15 percent statewide. Under a new deal struck between the Biden and Sanders camps, Biden will be allocated (or reallocated) all of the statewide delegates in a given state. However, during the selection process, the state party will select Sanders-aligned delegate candidates in proportion to the share of the qualified statewide vote.
Election type: primary
Date: June 9
[May 12 originally]
Number of delegates: 34 [6 at-large, 3 PLEOs, 19 congressional district, 6 automatic/superdelegates]
Allocation method: proportional statewide and at the congressional district level
Threshold to qualify for delegates: 15%
2016: proportional primary
Delegate selection plan (post-coronavirus)
--
Changes since 2016
If one followed the 2016 series on the Republican process here at FHQ, then you may end up somewhat disappointed. The two national parties manage the presidential nomination process differently. The Republican National Committee is much less hands-on in regulating state and state party activity in the delegate selection process than the Democratic National Committee is. That leads to a lot of variation from state to state and from cycle to cycle on the Republican side. Meanwhile, the DNC is much more top down in its approach. Thresholds stay the same. It is a 15 percent barrier that candidates must cross in order to qualify for delegates. That is standard across all states. The allocation of delegates is roughly proportional. Again, that is applied to every state.
That does not mean there are no changes. The calendar has changed as have other facets of the process such as whether a state has a primary or a caucus.
Other than Mountain state Republicans changing to a February convention for the 2008 cycle, West Virginia delegate allocation has happened in May since the 1988 cycle. That did not change in the lead up to 2020. However, there was a short-lived and unsuccessful effort in 2017 to move the West Virginia primary to the second Friday in February. That obviously would have conflicted with the national party rules on the timing of primaries and caucuses and died in committee.
However, there were changes to the ways in which West Virginia will conduct its 2020 primary triggered by the coronavirus. The initial response by Secretary of State Mac Warner (R) was to keep the primary on May 12 but work with county elections clerks to mail absentee vote-by-mail applications to all eligible West Virginia voters. But that was followed in quick succession at the beginning of April by an executive order from Governor Jim Justice (R) moving the primary back four weeks to June 9.
There will still be a ten day window for in-person early voting from May 27-June 6 and in-person election day voting remains an option as well. But the secretary of state is expecting record vote-by-mail numbers. Typically only 3 percent of West Virginians have voted in that manner in the past, but a little more than 20 percent had already requested ballots as of May 26. [UPDATE (6/9/20): As of election eve, 21.4 percent of registered voters in West Virginia had requested absentee ballots and 17.2 percent had cast them by June 8 according to the secretary of state in the Mountain state. Another 3 percent had voted during the early voting window.]
All vote-by-mail ballots are due to county elections offices postmarked on or before Tuesday, June 9.
Overall, the Democratic delegation in West Virginia changed by three delegates from 2016 to 2020. Among the categories of pledged delegates, the number of district delegates decreased by one while the totals of PLEO and at-large remained the same as they were four years ago. West Virginia Democrats also lost two superdelegates in that time.
[Please see below for more on the post-coronavirus changes specifically to the delegate selection process.]
Thresholds
The standard 15 percent qualifying threshold applies both statewide and on the congressional district level.
Delegate allocation (at-large and PLEO delegates)
To win any at-large or PLEO (pledged Party Leader and Elected Officials) delegates a candidate must win 15 percent of the statewide vote. Only the votes of those candidates above the threshold will count for the purposes of the separate allocation of these two pools of delegates.
See New Hampshire synopsis for an example of how the delegate allocation math works for all categories of delegates.
Delegate allocation (congressional district delegates)
West Virginia's 19 congressional district delegates are split across three congressional districts and have a variation of four delegates across districts from the measure of Democratic strength Mountain state Democrats are using based on the results of the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections in the state. That method apportions delegates as follows...
CD1 - 6 delegates
CD2 - 7 delegates*
CD3 - 6 delegates
*Bear in mind that districts with odd numbers of national convention delegates are potentially important to winners (and those above the qualifying threshold) within those districts. Rounding up for an extra delegate initially requires less in those districts than in districts with even numbers of delegates.
Delegate allocation (automatic delegates/superdelegates)
Superdelegates are free to align with a candidate of their choice at a time of their choosing. While their support may be a signal to voters in their state (if an endorsement is made before voting in that state), superdelegates will only vote on the first ballot at the national convention if half of the total number of delegates -- pledged plus superdelegates -- have been pledged to one candidate. Otherwise, superdelegates are locked out of the voting unless 1) the convention adopts rules that allow them to vote or 2) the voting process extends to a second ballot. But then all delegates, not just superdelegates will be free to vote for any candidate.
[NOTE: All Democratic delegates are pledged and not bound to their candidates. They are to vote in good conscience for the candidate to whom they have been pledged, but technically do not have to. But they tend to because the candidates and their campaigns are involved in vetting and selecting their delegates through the various selection processes on the state level. Well, the good campaigns are anyway.]
Selection
The selection of the 28 pledged delegates to the national convention in West Virginia will follow a similar trajectory to the plan laid out prior to the outbreak of the coronavirus. But the kick off event -- the county caucuses -- will be later and the whole process will contain more virtual elements than had been the true with the plan originally approved by the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee in 2019. County conventions pushed back to May 16 will occur virtually and select delegates to the state convention. Once those wishing to participate file to do so via Google Forms (with the state party), the state party will electronically distribute ballots on May 13 to be completed by May 16.
Those delegates selected to attend the state convention will then be mailed or emailed ballots for remotely/virtually electing the 19 district delegates starting on May 25. Those ballots will be due to the West Virginia Democratic Party via email, mail or call by June 12.
A day later on June 13, the West Virginia Democratic Party State Executive Committee will convene virtually and select the PLEO and then at-large delegates to the national convention.
The dates of selection for all categories of pledged delegates fall on the same days they were before the coronavirus.
[The original timeline West Virginia Democrats planned to use in order to select delegates to the national convention began with pre-primary county caucuses on March 28. Participants at those county caucuses would have elected delegates to the post-primary state convention on June 12-13. District caucuses at the state convention would have selected the 19 district delegates. Then the PLEO and then at-large delegates would have been selected on June 13 by the West Virginia Democratic Party State Executive Committee.]
Importantly, if a candidate drops out of the race before the selection of statewide delegates, then any statewide delegates allocated to that candidate will be reallocated to the remaining candidates. If Candidate X is in the race in mid-June when the West Virginia statewide delegate selection takes place but Candidate Y is not, then any statewide delegates allocated to Candidate Y in the earlier June primary would be reallocated to Candidate X. [This same feature is not something that applies to district delegates.] This reallocation only applies if a candidate has fully dropped out. This is less likely to be a factor with just Biden left as the only viable candidate in the race, but Sanders could still gain statewide delegates by finishing with more than 15 percent statewide. Under a new deal struck between the Biden and Sanders camps, Biden will be allocated (or reallocated) all of the statewide delegates in a given state. However, during the selection process, the state party will select Sanders-aligned delegate candidates in proportion to the share of the qualified statewide vote.
Friday, May 29, 2020
2020 Democratic Delegate Allocation: GEORGIA
GEORGIA
Election type: primary
Date: June 9
[March 24 originally and then May 19]
Number of delegates: 119 [23 at-large, 14 PLEOs, 68 congressional district, 14 automatic/superdelegates]
Allocation method: proportional statewide and at the congressional district level
Threshold to qualify for delegates: 15%
2016: proportional primary
Delegate selection plan (post-coronavirus)
--
Changes since 2016
If one followed the 2016 series on the Republican process here at FHQ, then you may end up somewhat disappointed. The two national parties manage the presidential nomination process differently. The Republican National Committee is much less hands-on in regulating state and state party activity in the delegate selection process than the Democratic National Committee is. That leads to a lot of variation from state to state and from cycle to cycle on the Republican side. Meanwhile, the DNC is much more top down in its approach. Thresholds stay the same. It is a 15 percent barrier that candidates must cross in order to qualify for delegates. That is standard across all states. The allocation of delegates is roughly proportional. Again, that is applied to every state.
That does not mean there are no changes. The calendar has changed as have other facets of the process such as whether a state has a primary or a caucus.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) nudged the presidential primary in the Peach state away from Super Tuesday for the first time since 1992 and the first time later than the first couple of weeks of March since 1976. The impetus behind the move to March 24 in 2019 was to accommodate Georgia Republicans in their delegate selection process. It allowed the GA GOP to allocate delegates in a more winner-take-all manner.
But those changes happened before 2020 and before the coronavirus pandemic intervened. That disrupted the plans for a March 24 primary since that fell at a point on the calendar when statewide lockdowns were beginning. That initially led Secretary Raffensperger to postpone the presidential primary, consolidating it with the primaries for state and local offices on May 19. Toward the end of March, Raffensperger then announced that all eligible Georgia voters would be mailed an absentee vote-by-mail request form for the May 19 primary.
However, Republicans less than happy about the mailed absentee applications and the lack of legislative input on the plan began calling for an even later primary date. Around that same time, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp (R) extended the state of emergency in the Peach state to May 13, cutting into the early voting period for the May 19 primary. That led Raffensperger to move the primary back another three weeks to June 9. Absentee ballots requested before the second primary date change -- those with the May 19 date on them -- will still be accepted, and voters can still request absentee ballots up until election day on June 9.
All ballots are due to county elections offices on or before Tuesday, June 9.
Overall, the Democratic delegation in Georgia changed by four delegates from 2016 to 2020. Each of the categories of delegates -- district, at-large, PLEO and superdelegate -- increased by one over the last four years.
[Please see below for more on the post-coronavirus changes specifically to the delegate selection process.]
Thresholds
The standard 15 percent qualifying threshold applies both statewide and on the congressional district level.
Delegate allocation (at-large and PLEO delegates)
To win any at-large or PLEO (pledged Party Leader and Elected Officials) delegates a candidate must win 15 percent of the statewide vote. Only the votes of those candidates above the threshold will count for the purposes of the separate allocation of these two pools of delegates.
See New Hampshire synopsis for an example of how the delegate allocation math works for all categories of delegates.
Delegate allocation (congressional district delegates)
Georgia's 68 congressional district delegates are split across 14 congressional districts and have a variation of four delegates across districts from the measure of Democratic strength Georgia Democrats are using based on the results of the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections in the state. That method apportions delegates as follows...
CD1 - 5 delegates*
CD2 - 5 delegates*
CD3 - 4 delegates
CD4 - 7 delegates*
CD5 - 7 delegates*
CD6 - 5 delegates*
CD7 - 5 delegates*
CD8 - 4 delegates
CD9 - 4 delegates
CD10 - 4 delegates
CD11 - 5 delegates*
CD12 - 4 delegates
CD13 - 6 delegates
CD14 - 3 delegates*
*Bear in mind that districts with odd numbers of national convention delegates are potentially important to winners (and those above the qualifying threshold) within those districts. Rounding up for an extra delegate initially requires less in those districts than in districts with even numbers of delegates.
Delegate allocation (automatic delegates/superdelegates)
Superdelegates are free to align with a candidate of their choice at a time of their choosing. While their support may be a signal to voters in their state (if an endorsement is made before voting in that state), superdelegates will only vote on the first ballot at the national convention if half of the total number of delegates -- pledged plus superdelegates -- have been pledged to one candidate. Otherwise, superdelegates are locked out of the voting unless 1) the convention adopts rules that allow them to vote or 2) the voting process extends to a second ballot. But then all delegates, not just superdelegates will be free to vote for any candidate.
[NOTE: All Democratic delegates are pledged and not bound to their candidates. They are to vote in good conscience for the candidate to whom they have been pledged, but technically do not have to. But they tend to because the candidates and their campaigns are involved in vetting and selecting their delegates through the various selection processes on the state level. Well, the good campaigns are anyway.]
Selection
The selection of the 68 district delegates in Georgia occurred remotely in a pre-primary vote on May 23 via Google Forms Ballots and call-in voting. As the vote happened before the primary, slates for active candidates were selected and delegate slots will be filled according to the results within each of the thirteen congressional districts. The credentialling for that vote took place from April 13-May 8.
PLEO delegates will be remotely selected on June 20 -- also via Google Forms Ballot -- by the district delegates selected on May 23.
Finally, the at-large delegates will also be selected on June 20 by the state central committee. That selection process will happen virtually via Google Forms Ballot.
[Initially, before the coronavirus pandemic hit and when there was going to be a March 24 primary, Georgia Democrats had planned to hold post-primary congressional district caucuses on April 11 to select district delegates. Those district-level delegates to the national convention were to then have selected PLEO on April 25. Finally, the at-large delegates were to have been selected by the Georgia Democratic state central committee on May 16. All of those dates would have fallen before the May 19 primary much less the new date of the contest, June 9.]
Importantly, if a candidate drops out of the race before the selection of statewide delegates, then any statewide delegates allocated to that candidate will be reallocated to the remaining candidates. If Candidate X is in the race in late-June when the Georgia statewide delegate selection takes place but Candidate Y is not, then any statewide delegates allocated to Candidate Y in the mid-June primary would be reallocated to Candidate X. [This same feature is not something that applies to district delegates.] This reallocation only applies if a candidate has fully dropped out. This is less likely to be a factor with just Biden left as the only viable candidate in the race, but Sanders could still gain statewide delegates by finishing with more than 15 percent statewide. Under a new deal struck between the Biden and Sanders camps, Biden will be allocated (or reallocated) all of the statewide delegates in a given state. However, during the selection process, the state party will select Sanders-aligned delegate candidates in proportion to the share of the qualified statewide vote.
Election type: primary
Date: June 9
[March 24 originally and then May 19]
Number of delegates: 119 [23 at-large, 14 PLEOs, 68 congressional district, 14 automatic/superdelegates]
Allocation method: proportional statewide and at the congressional district level
Threshold to qualify for delegates: 15%
2016: proportional primary
Delegate selection plan (post-coronavirus)
--
Changes since 2016
If one followed the 2016 series on the Republican process here at FHQ, then you may end up somewhat disappointed. The two national parties manage the presidential nomination process differently. The Republican National Committee is much less hands-on in regulating state and state party activity in the delegate selection process than the Democratic National Committee is. That leads to a lot of variation from state to state and from cycle to cycle on the Republican side. Meanwhile, the DNC is much more top down in its approach. Thresholds stay the same. It is a 15 percent barrier that candidates must cross in order to qualify for delegates. That is standard across all states. The allocation of delegates is roughly proportional. Again, that is applied to every state.
That does not mean there are no changes. The calendar has changed as have other facets of the process such as whether a state has a primary or a caucus.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) nudged the presidential primary in the Peach state away from Super Tuesday for the first time since 1992 and the first time later than the first couple of weeks of March since 1976. The impetus behind the move to March 24 in 2019 was to accommodate Georgia Republicans in their delegate selection process. It allowed the GA GOP to allocate delegates in a more winner-take-all manner.
But those changes happened before 2020 and before the coronavirus pandemic intervened. That disrupted the plans for a March 24 primary since that fell at a point on the calendar when statewide lockdowns were beginning. That initially led Secretary Raffensperger to postpone the presidential primary, consolidating it with the primaries for state and local offices on May 19. Toward the end of March, Raffensperger then announced that all eligible Georgia voters would be mailed an absentee vote-by-mail request form for the May 19 primary.
However, Republicans less than happy about the mailed absentee applications and the lack of legislative input on the plan began calling for an even later primary date. Around that same time, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp (R) extended the state of emergency in the Peach state to May 13, cutting into the early voting period for the May 19 primary. That led Raffensperger to move the primary back another three weeks to June 9. Absentee ballots requested before the second primary date change -- those with the May 19 date on them -- will still be accepted, and voters can still request absentee ballots up until election day on June 9.
All ballots are due to county elections offices on or before Tuesday, June 9.
Overall, the Democratic delegation in Georgia changed by four delegates from 2016 to 2020. Each of the categories of delegates -- district, at-large, PLEO and superdelegate -- increased by one over the last four years.
[Please see below for more on the post-coronavirus changes specifically to the delegate selection process.]
Thresholds
The standard 15 percent qualifying threshold applies both statewide and on the congressional district level.
Delegate allocation (at-large and PLEO delegates)
To win any at-large or PLEO (pledged Party Leader and Elected Officials) delegates a candidate must win 15 percent of the statewide vote. Only the votes of those candidates above the threshold will count for the purposes of the separate allocation of these two pools of delegates.
See New Hampshire synopsis for an example of how the delegate allocation math works for all categories of delegates.
Delegate allocation (congressional district delegates)
Georgia's 68 congressional district delegates are split across 14 congressional districts and have a variation of four delegates across districts from the measure of Democratic strength Georgia Democrats are using based on the results of the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections in the state. That method apportions delegates as follows...
CD1 - 5 delegates*
CD2 - 5 delegates*
CD3 - 4 delegates
CD4 - 7 delegates*
CD5 - 7 delegates*
CD6 - 5 delegates*
CD7 - 5 delegates*
CD8 - 4 delegates
CD9 - 4 delegates
CD10 - 4 delegates
CD11 - 5 delegates*
CD12 - 4 delegates
CD13 - 6 delegates
CD14 - 3 delegates*
*Bear in mind that districts with odd numbers of national convention delegates are potentially important to winners (and those above the qualifying threshold) within those districts. Rounding up for an extra delegate initially requires less in those districts than in districts with even numbers of delegates.
Delegate allocation (automatic delegates/superdelegates)
Superdelegates are free to align with a candidate of their choice at a time of their choosing. While their support may be a signal to voters in their state (if an endorsement is made before voting in that state), superdelegates will only vote on the first ballot at the national convention if half of the total number of delegates -- pledged plus superdelegates -- have been pledged to one candidate. Otherwise, superdelegates are locked out of the voting unless 1) the convention adopts rules that allow them to vote or 2) the voting process extends to a second ballot. But then all delegates, not just superdelegates will be free to vote for any candidate.
[NOTE: All Democratic delegates are pledged and not bound to their candidates. They are to vote in good conscience for the candidate to whom they have been pledged, but technically do not have to. But they tend to because the candidates and their campaigns are involved in vetting and selecting their delegates through the various selection processes on the state level. Well, the good campaigns are anyway.]
Selection
The selection of the 68 district delegates in Georgia occurred remotely in a pre-primary vote on May 23 via Google Forms Ballots and call-in voting. As the vote happened before the primary, slates for active candidates were selected and delegate slots will be filled according to the results within each of the thirteen congressional districts. The credentialling for that vote took place from April 13-May 8.
PLEO delegates will be remotely selected on June 20 -- also via Google Forms Ballot -- by the district delegates selected on May 23.
Finally, the at-large delegates will also be selected on June 20 by the state central committee. That selection process will happen virtually via Google Forms Ballot.
[Initially, before the coronavirus pandemic hit and when there was going to be a March 24 primary, Georgia Democrats had planned to hold post-primary congressional district caucuses on April 11 to select district delegates. Those district-level delegates to the national convention were to then have selected PLEO on April 25. Finally, the at-large delegates were to have been selected by the Georgia Democratic state central committee on May 16. All of those dates would have fallen before the May 19 primary much less the new date of the contest, June 9.]
Importantly, if a candidate drops out of the race before the selection of statewide delegates, then any statewide delegates allocated to that candidate will be reallocated to the remaining candidates. If Candidate X is in the race in late-June when the Georgia statewide delegate selection takes place but Candidate Y is not, then any statewide delegates allocated to Candidate Y in the mid-June primary would be reallocated to Candidate X. [This same feature is not something that applies to district delegates.] This reallocation only applies if a candidate has fully dropped out. This is less likely to be a factor with just Biden left as the only viable candidate in the race, but Sanders could still gain statewide delegates by finishing with more than 15 percent statewide. Under a new deal struck between the Biden and Sanders camps, Biden will be allocated (or reallocated) all of the statewide delegates in a given state. However, during the selection process, the state party will select Sanders-aligned delegate candidates in proportion to the share of the qualified statewide vote.
Thursday, May 28, 2020
2020 Democratic Delegate Allocation: US VIRGIN ISLANDS
US VIRGIN ISLANDS
Election type: territorial caucuses
Date: June 6
Number of delegates: 13 [7 at-large delegates, 6 automatic/superdelegates]
Allocation method: proportional territory-wide
Threshold to qualify for delegates: 15%
2016: territorial caucuses
Delegate selection plan (pre-coronavirus)
[Post-Coronavirus Addendum]
--
Changes since 2016
If one followed the 2016 series on the Republican process here at FHQ, then you may end up somewhat disappointed. The two national parties manage the presidential nomination process differently. The Republican National Committee is much less hands-on in regulating state and state party activity in the delegate selection process than the Democratic National Committee is. That leads to a lot of variation from state to state and from cycle to cycle on the Republican side. Meanwhile, the DNC is much more top down in its approach. Thresholds stay the same. It is a 15 percent barrier that candidates must cross in order to qualify for delegates. That is standard across all states. The allocation of delegates is roughly proportional. Again, that is applied to every state.
That does not mean there are no changes. The calendar has changed as have other facets of the process such as whether a state has a primary or a caucus.
Democrats in the US Virgin Islands kept their first Saturday in June position on the 2020 primary calendar, keeping the territory's contest there on the calendar for the third consecutive cycle. The delegation also remained the same size as it was in 2016.
And while much of the delegate selection plan remained the same -- the bulk of it carrying over from 2016 -- the intervention of the coronavirus affected the original plans the Democratic Party in the territory made. The caucuses will go on as planned on June 6, but the party will scale back a couple of facets of their approved delegate selection plan. Although the island does not have same day registration, the party had planned to work toward that end during the caucuses in 2020. But that has been scrapped. Early voting was also to have taken place from May 26-29, but that four day window has been cut to just two days and pushed back to just before the caucuses on June 4-5.
Yet, not all of the coronavirus changes were negative in terms of their potential impact on caucus turnout. The territorial party introduced drive-thru voting as a means of ameliorating some of the concerns caused by the coronavirus. Drive-thru voting will be available at all three caucus locations -- one on each of the three islands -- during the early voting period through caucus day on June 6. The drive-through option is just that, an option. It is included alongside the other in-person, electronic and postal options already available to Democrats in the Virgin Islands.
Thresholds
The standard 15 percent qualifying threshold applies territory-wide for the allocation of the seven at-large delegates.
Delegate allocation (at-large)
To win any at-large delegates a candidate must win 15 percent of the vote in the caucuses in one or both of two subdivisions into which the Democratic Party in the US Virgin Islands has divided the territory. The caucuses in St. Croix will have four (4) delegates to allocate while St. John/St. Thomas will together have three (3) delegates to allocate. Under DNC rules these seven (7) delegates are at-large, but are treated (allocated) as district delegates. Their allocation hinges not on the territory-wide vote, but on the votes within the two subdivisions.
Only the votes of those candidates above the threshold will count for the purposes of the allocation of those delegates.
See New Hampshire synopsis for an example of how the delegate allocation math works for all categories of delegates.
Delegate allocation (congressional district delegates)
There are no congressional districts within the US Virgin Islands and as such there are no technically district delegates to allocate in the June 6 caucuses. However, see the above description of the the at-large delegate allocation process.
Delegate allocation (automatic delegates/superdelegates)
Superdelegates are free to align with a candidate of their choice at a time of their choosing. While their support may be a signal to voters in their state (if an endorsement is made before voting in that state), superdelegates will only vote on the first ballot at the national convention if half of the total number of delegates -- pledged plus superdelegates -- have been pledged to one candidate. Otherwise, superdelegates are locked out of the voting unless 1) the convention adopts rules that allow them to vote or 2) the voting process extends to a second ballot. But then all delegates, not just superdelegates will be free to vote for any candidate.
[NOTE: All Democratic delegates are pledged and not bound to their candidates. They are to vote in good conscience for the candidate to whom they have been pledged, but technically do not have to. But they tend to because the candidates and their campaigns are involved in vetting and selecting their delegates through the various selection processes on the state level. Well, the good campaigns are anyway.]
Selection
The seven at-large delegates to the national convention from US Virgin Islands will be selected at the June 6 territory-wide caucuses. Delegate candidates were to have filed by May 17 and will be selected in proportion to the vote of qualifying candidates in the caucuses.
Importantly, if a candidate drops out of the race before the selection of territory-wide delegates, then any territory-wide delegates allocated to that candidate will be reallocated to the remaining candidates. However, given the simultaneity of the allocation and selection on June 6 in the Virgin Islands, that means that there is no real potential for reallocation of those territory-wide delegates. This reallocation would only apply if a candidate has fully dropped out. This is less likely to be a factor with just Biden left as the only viable candidate in the race, but Sanders could still gain territory-wide delegates by finishing with more than 15 percent territory-wide. Under a new deal struck between the Biden and Sanders camps, Biden will be allocated (or reallocated) all of the territory-wide delegates in a given state. However, during the selection process, the state party will select Sanders-aligned delegate candidates in proportion to the share of the qualified territory-wide vote.
Election type: territorial caucuses
Date: June 6
Number of delegates: 13 [7 at-large delegates, 6 automatic/superdelegates]
Allocation method: proportional territory-wide
Threshold to qualify for delegates: 15%
2016: territorial caucuses
Delegate selection plan (pre-coronavirus)
[Post-Coronavirus Addendum]
--
Changes since 2016
If one followed the 2016 series on the Republican process here at FHQ, then you may end up somewhat disappointed. The two national parties manage the presidential nomination process differently. The Republican National Committee is much less hands-on in regulating state and state party activity in the delegate selection process than the Democratic National Committee is. That leads to a lot of variation from state to state and from cycle to cycle on the Republican side. Meanwhile, the DNC is much more top down in its approach. Thresholds stay the same. It is a 15 percent barrier that candidates must cross in order to qualify for delegates. That is standard across all states. The allocation of delegates is roughly proportional. Again, that is applied to every state.
That does not mean there are no changes. The calendar has changed as have other facets of the process such as whether a state has a primary or a caucus.
Democrats in the US Virgin Islands kept their first Saturday in June position on the 2020 primary calendar, keeping the territory's contest there on the calendar for the third consecutive cycle. The delegation also remained the same size as it was in 2016.
And while much of the delegate selection plan remained the same -- the bulk of it carrying over from 2016 -- the intervention of the coronavirus affected the original plans the Democratic Party in the territory made. The caucuses will go on as planned on June 6, but the party will scale back a couple of facets of their approved delegate selection plan. Although the island does not have same day registration, the party had planned to work toward that end during the caucuses in 2020. But that has been scrapped. Early voting was also to have taken place from May 26-29, but that four day window has been cut to just two days and pushed back to just before the caucuses on June 4-5.
Yet, not all of the coronavirus changes were negative in terms of their potential impact on caucus turnout. The territorial party introduced drive-thru voting as a means of ameliorating some of the concerns caused by the coronavirus. Drive-thru voting will be available at all three caucus locations -- one on each of the three islands -- during the early voting period through caucus day on June 6. The drive-through option is just that, an option. It is included alongside the other in-person, electronic and postal options already available to Democrats in the Virgin Islands.
Thresholds
The standard 15 percent qualifying threshold applies territory-wide for the allocation of the seven at-large delegates.
Delegate allocation (at-large)
To win any at-large delegates a candidate must win 15 percent of the vote in the caucuses in one or both of two subdivisions into which the Democratic Party in the US Virgin Islands has divided the territory. The caucuses in St. Croix will have four (4) delegates to allocate while St. John/St. Thomas will together have three (3) delegates to allocate. Under DNC rules these seven (7) delegates are at-large, but are treated (allocated) as district delegates. Their allocation hinges not on the territory-wide vote, but on the votes within the two subdivisions.
Only the votes of those candidates above the threshold will count for the purposes of the allocation of those delegates.
See New Hampshire synopsis for an example of how the delegate allocation math works for all categories of delegates.
Delegate allocation (congressional district delegates)
There are no congressional districts within the US Virgin Islands and as such there are no technically district delegates to allocate in the June 6 caucuses. However, see the above description of the the at-large delegate allocation process.
Delegate allocation (automatic delegates/superdelegates)
Superdelegates are free to align with a candidate of their choice at a time of their choosing. While their support may be a signal to voters in their state (if an endorsement is made before voting in that state), superdelegates will only vote on the first ballot at the national convention if half of the total number of delegates -- pledged plus superdelegates -- have been pledged to one candidate. Otherwise, superdelegates are locked out of the voting unless 1) the convention adopts rules that allow them to vote or 2) the voting process extends to a second ballot. But then all delegates, not just superdelegates will be free to vote for any candidate.
[NOTE: All Democratic delegates are pledged and not bound to their candidates. They are to vote in good conscience for the candidate to whom they have been pledged, but technically do not have to. But they tend to because the candidates and their campaigns are involved in vetting and selecting their delegates through the various selection processes on the state level. Well, the good campaigns are anyway.]
Selection
The seven at-large delegates to the national convention from US Virgin Islands will be selected at the June 6 territory-wide caucuses. Delegate candidates were to have filed by May 17 and will be selected in proportion to the vote of qualifying candidates in the caucuses.
Importantly, if a candidate drops out of the race before the selection of territory-wide delegates, then any territory-wide delegates allocated to that candidate will be reallocated to the remaining candidates. However, given the simultaneity of the allocation and selection on June 6 in the Virgin Islands, that means that there is no real potential for reallocation of those territory-wide delegates. This reallocation would only apply if a candidate has fully dropped out. This is less likely to be a factor with just Biden left as the only viable candidate in the race, but Sanders could still gain territory-wide delegates by finishing with more than 15 percent territory-wide. Under a new deal struck between the Biden and Sanders camps, Biden will be allocated (or reallocated) all of the territory-wide delegates in a given state. However, during the selection process, the state party will select Sanders-aligned delegate candidates in proportion to the share of the qualified territory-wide vote.
Wednesday, May 27, 2020
2020 Democratic Delegate Allocation: WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
WASHINGTON, DC
Election type: primary
Date: June 2
Number of delegates: 44 [5 at-large, 2 PLEOs, 13 congressional district, 24 automatic/superdelegates]
Allocation method: proportional statewide and at the sub-district level
Threshold to qualify for delegates: 15%
2016: proportional primary
Delegate selection plan [includes post-coronavirus plans]
--
Changes since 2016
If one followed the 2016 series on the Republican process here at FHQ, then you may end up somewhat disappointed. The two national parties manage the presidential nomination process differently. The Republican National Committee is much less hands-on in regulating state and state party activity in the delegate selection process than the Democratic National Committee is. That leads to a lot of variation from state to state and from cycle to cycle on the Republican side. Meanwhile, the DNC is much more top down in its approach. Thresholds stay the same. It is a 15 percent barrier that candidates must cross in order to qualify for delegates. That is standard across all states. The allocation of delegates is roughly proportional. Again, that is applied to every state.
That does not mean there are no changes. The calendar has changed as have other facets of the process such as whether a state has a primary or a caucus.
In 2016, Washington, DC Democrats brought up the rear of the primary calendar with a contest on the second Tuesday in June. But in a cost-saving move, the DC Council opted in 2017 to consolidate the presidential primary with local primaries and to schedule the contest for the third Tuesday in June. That date was chosen not only because local schools would be done for the year by then (and thus would reduce conflicts with the school calendar and operation), but also because the early voting window would not overlap with Memorial Day.
Granted, that late date while advantageous from those angles also would put the DC presidential primary in violation of the national parties' rules on the timing of delegate selection events. It would have been too late. As a result, the DC Council in 2019 worked to shift the primary up two weeks to the first Tuesday in June and tweak the early voting window to prevent the Memorial Day issue.
All of that happened before 2020 and before the coronavirus intervened and shook up election administration across the country. In the face of those challenges, DC did not move its primary again (as some states have done), but the decision was made by the Board of Elections to encourage all voters to request an absentee ballot in early April and the DC Council followed that up later in the month with an emergency coronavirus relief bill that called for the distribution of absentee vote-by-mail applications to all eligible District voters.1 As of three weeks ago -- a month after the Board of Elections began pushing voters to request absentee ballots -- 34,000 voters had requested them.
In-person voting has not been eliminated, began on May 22 and will conclude on Election Day, June 2. The Board of Elections will not open the usual 144 voting centers on election day, but will instead work with an unknown but reduced number of sites.
All mail-in ballots are due to the DC Board of Elections office postmarked on or before Tuesday, June 2. As long as the ballot is postmarked by election day, it will be accepted up to seven (7) days after June 2.
Overall, the Democratic delegation from Washington, DC changed by just one delegate from 2016 to 2020. The number of superdelegates increased by one while the three pledged delegate categories all remained the same.
[Please see below for more on the post-coronavirus changes specifically to the delegate selection process.]
Thresholds
The standard 15 percent qualifying threshold applies both statewide and on the congressional district level.
Delegate allocation (at-large and PLEO delegates)
To win any at-large or PLEO (pledged Party Leader and Elected Officials) delegates a candidate must win 15 percent of the statewide vote. Only the votes of those candidates above the threshold will count for the purposes of the separate allocation of these two pools of delegates.
See New Hampshire synopsis for an example of how the delegate allocation math works for all categories of delegates.
Delegate allocation (congressional district delegates)
Washington, DC's 13 "congressional" district delegates are split across two districts of four wards each. There is a variation across those districts of just one delegate from the measure of Democratic strength District of Columbia Democrats are using based on the results of the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections in the state (plus Democratic registration in the nation's capital on January 1, 2020). That method apportions delegates as follows...
District 1 (Wards 1, 2, 6 & 8) - 7 delegates*
District 2 (Wards 3, 4, 5 & 7) - 6 delegates
*Bear in mind that districts with odd numbers of national convention delegates are potentially important to winners (and those above the qualifying threshold) within those districts. Rounding up for an extra delegate initially requires less in those districts than in districts with even numbers of delegates.
Delegate allocation (automatic delegates/superdelegates)
Superdelegates are free to align with a candidate of their choice at a time of their choosing. While their support may be a signal to voters in their state (if an endorsement is made before voting in that state), superdelegates will only vote on the first ballot at the national convention if half of the total number of delegates -- pledged plus superdelegates -- have been pledged to one candidate. Otherwise, superdelegates are locked out of the voting unless 1) the convention adopts rules that allow them to vote or 2) the voting process extends to a second ballot. But then all delegates, not just superdelegates will be free to vote for any candidate.
[NOTE: All Democratic delegates are pledged and not bound to their candidates. They are to vote in good conscience for the candidate to whom they have been pledged, but technically do not have to. But they tend to because the candidates and their campaigns are involved in vetting and selecting their delegates through the various selection processes on the state level. Well, the good campaigns are anyway.]
Selection
Delegate selection took a hit in Washington, DC as it did in other places because of the coronavirus, but it's impact was not as far-reaching. Like South Dakota, DC's comparatively late primary on the original calendar forced decision makers within the Democratic Party there to include some pre-primary elements. The district delegates, for instance, were to have been selected on April 18. However, the pandemic forced those in-person caucuses online and voting occurred from April 25-May 21 to determine slates of district delegates with which allocated slots will be filled after the primary.
Initially, the district-wide delegates were to have been selected at two separate post-primary meetings of the DC State Central Committee. PLEO delegates would have been chosen on June 4 and at-large delegates a week later on June 11. Now, in the wake of the coronavirus, the there will be just one meeting -- on June 11 -- and both sets of district-wide delegates will be selected there. That meeting is still tentatively planned to be an in-person affair unless social distancing measures remain in place. In that scenario, the June 11 Central Committee meeting will shift to Zoom.
Importantly, if a candidate drops out of the race before the selection of statewide delegates, then any statewide delegates allocated to that candidate will be reallocated to the remaining candidates. If Candidate X is in the race in mid-June when the Washington, DC district-wide delegate selection takes place but Candidate Y is not, then any statewide delegates allocated to Candidate Y in the early June primary would be reallocated to Candidate X. [This same feature is not something that applies to district delegates.] This reallocation only applies if a candidate has fully dropped out. This is less likely to be a factor with just Biden left as the only viable candidate in the race, but Sanders could still gain statewide delegates by finishing with more than 15 percent statewide. Under a new deal struck between the Biden and Sanders camps, Biden will be allocated (or reallocated) all of the statewide delegates in a given state. However, during the selection process, the state party will select Sanders-aligned delegate candidates in proportion to the share of the qualified statewide vote.
--
1 Here is the language from the bill -- B23-0733 -- specific to the mailing of absentee applications (with paid-postage return envelopes):
"For the June 2, 2020, Primary Election, mail every registered qualified elector an absentee ballot application and a postage-paid return envelope."
Election type: primary
Date: June 2
Number of delegates: 44 [5 at-large, 2 PLEOs, 13 congressional district, 24 automatic/superdelegates]
Allocation method: proportional statewide and at the sub-district level
Threshold to qualify for delegates: 15%
2016: proportional primary
Delegate selection plan [includes post-coronavirus plans]
--
Changes since 2016
If one followed the 2016 series on the Republican process here at FHQ, then you may end up somewhat disappointed. The two national parties manage the presidential nomination process differently. The Republican National Committee is much less hands-on in regulating state and state party activity in the delegate selection process than the Democratic National Committee is. That leads to a lot of variation from state to state and from cycle to cycle on the Republican side. Meanwhile, the DNC is much more top down in its approach. Thresholds stay the same. It is a 15 percent barrier that candidates must cross in order to qualify for delegates. That is standard across all states. The allocation of delegates is roughly proportional. Again, that is applied to every state.
That does not mean there are no changes. The calendar has changed as have other facets of the process such as whether a state has a primary or a caucus.
In 2016, Washington, DC Democrats brought up the rear of the primary calendar with a contest on the second Tuesday in June. But in a cost-saving move, the DC Council opted in 2017 to consolidate the presidential primary with local primaries and to schedule the contest for the third Tuesday in June. That date was chosen not only because local schools would be done for the year by then (and thus would reduce conflicts with the school calendar and operation), but also because the early voting window would not overlap with Memorial Day.
Granted, that late date while advantageous from those angles also would put the DC presidential primary in violation of the national parties' rules on the timing of delegate selection events. It would have been too late. As a result, the DC Council in 2019 worked to shift the primary up two weeks to the first Tuesday in June and tweak the early voting window to prevent the Memorial Day issue.
All of that happened before 2020 and before the coronavirus intervened and shook up election administration across the country. In the face of those challenges, DC did not move its primary again (as some states have done), but the decision was made by the Board of Elections to encourage all voters to request an absentee ballot in early April and the DC Council followed that up later in the month with an emergency coronavirus relief bill that called for the distribution of absentee vote-by-mail applications to all eligible District voters.1 As of three weeks ago -- a month after the Board of Elections began pushing voters to request absentee ballots -- 34,000 voters had requested them.
In-person voting has not been eliminated, began on May 22 and will conclude on Election Day, June 2. The Board of Elections will not open the usual 144 voting centers on election day, but will instead work with an unknown but reduced number of sites.
All mail-in ballots are due to the DC Board of Elections office postmarked on or before Tuesday, June 2. As long as the ballot is postmarked by election day, it will be accepted up to seven (7) days after June 2.
Overall, the Democratic delegation from Washington, DC changed by just one delegate from 2016 to 2020. The number of superdelegates increased by one while the three pledged delegate categories all remained the same.
[Please see below for more on the post-coronavirus changes specifically to the delegate selection process.]
Thresholds
The standard 15 percent qualifying threshold applies both statewide and on the congressional district level.
Delegate allocation (at-large and PLEO delegates)
To win any at-large or PLEO (pledged Party Leader and Elected Officials) delegates a candidate must win 15 percent of the statewide vote. Only the votes of those candidates above the threshold will count for the purposes of the separate allocation of these two pools of delegates.
See New Hampshire synopsis for an example of how the delegate allocation math works for all categories of delegates.
Delegate allocation (congressional district delegates)
Washington, DC's 13 "congressional" district delegates are split across two districts of four wards each. There is a variation across those districts of just one delegate from the measure of Democratic strength District of Columbia Democrats are using based on the results of the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections in the state (plus Democratic registration in the nation's capital on January 1, 2020). That method apportions delegates as follows...
District 1 (Wards 1, 2, 6 & 8) - 7 delegates*
District 2 (Wards 3, 4, 5 & 7) - 6 delegates
*Bear in mind that districts with odd numbers of national convention delegates are potentially important to winners (and those above the qualifying threshold) within those districts. Rounding up for an extra delegate initially requires less in those districts than in districts with even numbers of delegates.
Delegate allocation (automatic delegates/superdelegates)
Superdelegates are free to align with a candidate of their choice at a time of their choosing. While their support may be a signal to voters in their state (if an endorsement is made before voting in that state), superdelegates will only vote on the first ballot at the national convention if half of the total number of delegates -- pledged plus superdelegates -- have been pledged to one candidate. Otherwise, superdelegates are locked out of the voting unless 1) the convention adopts rules that allow them to vote or 2) the voting process extends to a second ballot. But then all delegates, not just superdelegates will be free to vote for any candidate.
[NOTE: All Democratic delegates are pledged and not bound to their candidates. They are to vote in good conscience for the candidate to whom they have been pledged, but technically do not have to. But they tend to because the candidates and their campaigns are involved in vetting and selecting their delegates through the various selection processes on the state level. Well, the good campaigns are anyway.]
Selection
Delegate selection took a hit in Washington, DC as it did in other places because of the coronavirus, but it's impact was not as far-reaching. Like South Dakota, DC's comparatively late primary on the original calendar forced decision makers within the Democratic Party there to include some pre-primary elements. The district delegates, for instance, were to have been selected on April 18. However, the pandemic forced those in-person caucuses online and voting occurred from April 25-May 21 to determine slates of district delegates with which allocated slots will be filled after the primary.
Initially, the district-wide delegates were to have been selected at two separate post-primary meetings of the DC State Central Committee. PLEO delegates would have been chosen on June 4 and at-large delegates a week later on June 11. Now, in the wake of the coronavirus, the there will be just one meeting -- on June 11 -- and both sets of district-wide delegates will be selected there. That meeting is still tentatively planned to be an in-person affair unless social distancing measures remain in place. In that scenario, the June 11 Central Committee meeting will shift to Zoom.
Importantly, if a candidate drops out of the race before the selection of statewide delegates, then any statewide delegates allocated to that candidate will be reallocated to the remaining candidates. If Candidate X is in the race in mid-June when the Washington, DC district-wide delegate selection takes place but Candidate Y is not, then any statewide delegates allocated to Candidate Y in the early June primary would be reallocated to Candidate X. [This same feature is not something that applies to district delegates.] This reallocation only applies if a candidate has fully dropped out. This is less likely to be a factor with just Biden left as the only viable candidate in the race, but Sanders could still gain statewide delegates by finishing with more than 15 percent statewide. Under a new deal struck between the Biden and Sanders camps, Biden will be allocated (or reallocated) all of the statewide delegates in a given state. However, during the selection process, the state party will select Sanders-aligned delegate candidates in proportion to the share of the qualified statewide vote.
--
1 Here is the language from the bill -- B23-0733 -- specific to the mailing of absentee applications (with paid-postage return envelopes):
"For the June 2, 2020, Primary Election, mail every registered qualified elector an absentee ballot application and a postage-paid return envelope."
Tuesday, May 26, 2020
2020 Democratic Delegate Allocation: SOUTH DAKOTA
SOUTH DAKOTA
Election type: primary
Date: June 2
Number of delegates: 21 [4 at-large, 2 PLEOs, 10 congressional district, 5 automatic/superdelegates]
Allocation method: proportional statewide and at the congressional district level
Threshold to qualify for delegates: 15%
2016: proportional primary
Delegate selection plan [includes post-coronavirus plans]
--
Changes since 2016
If one followed the 2016 series on the Republican process here at FHQ, then you may end up somewhat disappointed. The two national parties manage the presidential nomination process differently. The Republican National Committee is much less hands-on in regulating state and state party activity in the delegate selection process than the Democratic National Committee is. That leads to a lot of variation from state to state and from cycle to cycle on the Republican side. Meanwhile, the DNC is much more top down in its approach. Thresholds stay the same. It is a 15 percent barrier that candidates must cross in order to qualify for delegates. That is standard across all states. The allocation of delegates is roughly proportional. Again, that is applied to every state.
That does not mean there are no changes. The calendar has changed as have other facets of the process such as whether a state has a primary or a caucus.
South Dakota returned to its early June primary date for 2000 after three consecutive cycles in February. The presidential nomination contest has remained there ever since. And that includes the 2020 cycle. Not much, then, changed from 2016 to 2020. At least nothing changed with the delegate selection process in South Dakota until the coronavirus intervened in March 2020.
Since South Dakota Democrats have several pre-primary steps involved in their process, given the late date of the primary, the party had to act quickly to move those scheduled in-person events to virtual fora. The primary and indeed the entire timeline of delegate selection remained the same, but all in-person components were moved online.
Another change post-coronavirus was that the South Dakota secretary of state opted in early April to mail out absentee voting applications to all registered South Dakotans. That has been a common response at the heights of election administration in states across the country since March. The one added layer to the South Dakota absentee voting application process is that voters must also show identification in order to receive a ballot. Typically that process has been handled in person at county elections offices. However, that requirement has been relaxed and voters have the option of photocopying their ID and emailing to county auditors after they have mailed in their ballots.
The early voting window opened on April 17 and applications were mailed out in late April and early May, giving South Dakota voters time to complete the process. But those are a lot of steps for elections administrators to complete considering the number of vote-by-mail voters will likely increase as compared to other years.
In-person voting locations will continue to operate for early voting and voting on election day.
All mail-in absentee ballots are due to county election offices on or before 7pm on Tuesday, June 2.
Overall, the Democratic delegation in South Dakota decreased by four delegates from 2016 to 2020. And the entirety of that loss was felt in the district delegate column. All of the other categories of delegates -- PLEO, at-large and superdelegate -- remained the same in 2020 as they were in 2016.
[Please see below for more on the post-coronavirus changes specifically to the delegate selection process.]
Thresholds
The standard 15 percent qualifying threshold applies both statewide and on the congressional district level.
Delegate allocation (at-large and PLEO delegates)
To win any at-large or PLEO (pledged Party Leader and Elected Officials) delegates a candidate must win 15 percent of the statewide vote. Only the votes of those candidates above the threshold will count for the purposes of the separate allocation of these two pools of delegates.
See New Hampshire synopsis for an example of how the delegate allocation math works for all categories of delegates.
Delegate allocation (congressional district delegates)
South Dakota's 10 congressional district delegates are spread across one at-large congressional district. As such there is no variation across any districts. However, the measure of Democratic strength South Dakota Democrats are using based on the results of the 2016 presidential and 2018 gubernatorial elections in the state is used to determine the number of statewide caucus delegates each of seven regional districts (comprised of five state legislative districts each) receives. Regional caucuses ensure that the slates have representation from multiple areas across the state.
It is that statewide caucus on March 21 that selects slates of delegates for each candidate that will be allocated based on the results of the June 2 primary. In the end the allocation of those 10 "district" delegates will be proportional based on the statewide result. That is the same as it is for the two categories of statewide delegates as described above.
Delegate allocation (automatic delegates/superdelegates)
Superdelegates are free to align with a candidate of their choice at a time of their choosing. While their support may be a signal to voters in their state (if an endorsement is made before voting in that state), superdelegates will only vote on the first ballot at the national convention if half of the total number of delegates -- pledged plus superdelegates -- have been pledged to one candidate. Otherwise, superdelegates are locked out of the voting unless 1) the convention adopts rules that allow them to vote or 2) the voting process extends to a second ballot. But then all delegates, not just superdelegates will be free to vote for any candidate.
[NOTE: All Democratic delegates are pledged and not bound to their candidates. They are to vote in good conscience for the candidate to whom they have been pledged, but technically do not have to. But they tend to because the candidates and their campaigns are involved in vetting and selecting their delegates through the various selection processes on the state level. Well, the good campaigns are anyway.]
Selection
With such a late primary (at least in the context of the original calendar), South Dakota Democrats had already built into their delegate selection process some pre-primary elements. But those components were shifted to remote processes in March. Both the March 14 regional caucuses (seven districts comprised of five state legislative districts each) and the March 21 statewide caucus made up a two-tiered caucus process to select slates of district delegates for each candidate. Following the June 2 primary, the results will determine how many delegates from those slates will fill slots allocated to the candidates.
PLEO and then at-large delegates will be selected at a virtual June 20 state convention. Delegates to that state convention are either state committee members or delegates elected at the county level to attend the state convention.
[The timeline laid out above has not changed. However, all of the in-person meeting from the March 14 regional caucuses to the March 21 statewide caucus to the June 20 state convention were or have been changed to remote meetings since the outbreak of the coronavirus.]
Importantly, if a candidate drops out of the race before the selection of statewide delegates, then any statewide delegates allocated to that candidate will be reallocated to the remaining candidates. If Candidate X is in the race in mid-June when the South Dakota statewide delegate selection takes place but Candidate Y is not, then any statewide delegates allocated to Candidate Y in the early June primary would be reallocated to Candidate X. [This same feature is not something that applies to district delegates.] This reallocation only applies if a candidate has fully dropped out. This is less likely to be a factor with just Biden left as the only viable candidate in the race, but Sanders could still gain statewide delegates by finishing with more than 15 percent statewide. Under a new deal struck between the Biden and Sanders camps, Biden will be allocated (or reallocated) all of the statewide delegates in a given state. However, during the selection process, the state party will select Sanders-aligned delegate candidates in proportion to the share of the qualified statewide vote.
Election type: primary
Date: June 2
Number of delegates: 21 [4 at-large, 2 PLEOs, 10 congressional district, 5 automatic/superdelegates]
Allocation method: proportional statewide and at the congressional district level
Threshold to qualify for delegates: 15%
2016: proportional primary
Delegate selection plan [includes post-coronavirus plans]
--
Changes since 2016
If one followed the 2016 series on the Republican process here at FHQ, then you may end up somewhat disappointed. The two national parties manage the presidential nomination process differently. The Republican National Committee is much less hands-on in regulating state and state party activity in the delegate selection process than the Democratic National Committee is. That leads to a lot of variation from state to state and from cycle to cycle on the Republican side. Meanwhile, the DNC is much more top down in its approach. Thresholds stay the same. It is a 15 percent barrier that candidates must cross in order to qualify for delegates. That is standard across all states. The allocation of delegates is roughly proportional. Again, that is applied to every state.
That does not mean there are no changes. The calendar has changed as have other facets of the process such as whether a state has a primary or a caucus.
South Dakota returned to its early June primary date for 2000 after three consecutive cycles in February. The presidential nomination contest has remained there ever since. And that includes the 2020 cycle. Not much, then, changed from 2016 to 2020. At least nothing changed with the delegate selection process in South Dakota until the coronavirus intervened in March 2020.
Since South Dakota Democrats have several pre-primary steps involved in their process, given the late date of the primary, the party had to act quickly to move those scheduled in-person events to virtual fora. The primary and indeed the entire timeline of delegate selection remained the same, but all in-person components were moved online.
Another change post-coronavirus was that the South Dakota secretary of state opted in early April to mail out absentee voting applications to all registered South Dakotans. That has been a common response at the heights of election administration in states across the country since March. The one added layer to the South Dakota absentee voting application process is that voters must also show identification in order to receive a ballot. Typically that process has been handled in person at county elections offices. However, that requirement has been relaxed and voters have the option of photocopying their ID and emailing to county auditors after they have mailed in their ballots.
The early voting window opened on April 17 and applications were mailed out in late April and early May, giving South Dakota voters time to complete the process. But those are a lot of steps for elections administrators to complete considering the number of vote-by-mail voters will likely increase as compared to other years.
In-person voting locations will continue to operate for early voting and voting on election day.
All mail-in absentee ballots are due to county election offices on or before 7pm on Tuesday, June 2.
Overall, the Democratic delegation in South Dakota decreased by four delegates from 2016 to 2020. And the entirety of that loss was felt in the district delegate column. All of the other categories of delegates -- PLEO, at-large and superdelegate -- remained the same in 2020 as they were in 2016.
[Please see below for more on the post-coronavirus changes specifically to the delegate selection process.]
Thresholds
The standard 15 percent qualifying threshold applies both statewide and on the congressional district level.
Delegate allocation (at-large and PLEO delegates)
To win any at-large or PLEO (pledged Party Leader and Elected Officials) delegates a candidate must win 15 percent of the statewide vote. Only the votes of those candidates above the threshold will count for the purposes of the separate allocation of these two pools of delegates.
See New Hampshire synopsis for an example of how the delegate allocation math works for all categories of delegates.
Delegate allocation (congressional district delegates)
South Dakota's 10 congressional district delegates are spread across one at-large congressional district. As such there is no variation across any districts. However, the measure of Democratic strength South Dakota Democrats are using based on the results of the 2016 presidential and 2018 gubernatorial elections in the state is used to determine the number of statewide caucus delegates each of seven regional districts (comprised of five state legislative districts each) receives. Regional caucuses ensure that the slates have representation from multiple areas across the state.
It is that statewide caucus on March 21 that selects slates of delegates for each candidate that will be allocated based on the results of the June 2 primary. In the end the allocation of those 10 "district" delegates will be proportional based on the statewide result. That is the same as it is for the two categories of statewide delegates as described above.
Delegate allocation (automatic delegates/superdelegates)
Superdelegates are free to align with a candidate of their choice at a time of their choosing. While their support may be a signal to voters in their state (if an endorsement is made before voting in that state), superdelegates will only vote on the first ballot at the national convention if half of the total number of delegates -- pledged plus superdelegates -- have been pledged to one candidate. Otherwise, superdelegates are locked out of the voting unless 1) the convention adopts rules that allow them to vote or 2) the voting process extends to a second ballot. But then all delegates, not just superdelegates will be free to vote for any candidate.
[NOTE: All Democratic delegates are pledged and not bound to their candidates. They are to vote in good conscience for the candidate to whom they have been pledged, but technically do not have to. But they tend to because the candidates and their campaigns are involved in vetting and selecting their delegates through the various selection processes on the state level. Well, the good campaigns are anyway.]
Selection
With such a late primary (at least in the context of the original calendar), South Dakota Democrats had already built into their delegate selection process some pre-primary elements. But those components were shifted to remote processes in March. Both the March 14 regional caucuses (seven districts comprised of five state legislative districts each) and the March 21 statewide caucus made up a two-tiered caucus process to select slates of district delegates for each candidate. Following the June 2 primary, the results will determine how many delegates from those slates will fill slots allocated to the candidates.
PLEO and then at-large delegates will be selected at a virtual June 20 state convention. Delegates to that state convention are either state committee members or delegates elected at the county level to attend the state convention.
[The timeline laid out above has not changed. However, all of the in-person meeting from the March 14 regional caucuses to the March 21 statewide caucus to the June 20 state convention were or have been changed to remote meetings since the outbreak of the coronavirus.]
Importantly, if a candidate drops out of the race before the selection of statewide delegates, then any statewide delegates allocated to that candidate will be reallocated to the remaining candidates. If Candidate X is in the race in mid-June when the South Dakota statewide delegate selection takes place but Candidate Y is not, then any statewide delegates allocated to Candidate Y in the early June primary would be reallocated to Candidate X. [This same feature is not something that applies to district delegates.] This reallocation only applies if a candidate has fully dropped out. This is less likely to be a factor with just Biden left as the only viable candidate in the race, but Sanders could still gain statewide delegates by finishing with more than 15 percent statewide. Under a new deal struck between the Biden and Sanders camps, Biden will be allocated (or reallocated) all of the statewide delegates in a given state. However, during the selection process, the state party will select Sanders-aligned delegate candidates in proportion to the share of the qualified statewide vote.
Monday, May 25, 2020
2020 Democratic Delegate Allocation: RHODE ISLAND
RHODE ISLAND
Election type: primary
Date: June 2
[April 28 originally]
Number of delegates: 35 [5 at-large, 3 PLEOs, 18 congressional district, 9 automatic/superdelegates]
Allocation method: proportional statewide and at the congressional district level
Threshold to qualify for delegates: 15%
2016: proportional primary
Delegate selection plan [includes post-coronavirus plans]
--
Changes since 2016
If one followed the 2016 series on the Republican process here at FHQ, then you may end up somewhat disappointed. The two national parties manage the presidential nomination process differently. The Republican National Committee is much less hands-on in regulating state and state party activity in the delegate selection process than the Democratic National Committee is. That leads to a lot of variation from state to state and from cycle to cycle on the Republican side. Meanwhile, the DNC is much more top down in its approach. Thresholds stay the same. It is a 15 percent barrier that candidates must cross in order to qualify for delegates. That is standard across all states. The allocation of delegates is roughly proportional. Again, that is applied to every state.
That does not mean there are no changes. The calendar has changed as have other facets of the process such as whether a state has a primary or a caucus.
Content to remain a part of the evolving regional primary collective that formed ahead of the 2012 presidential nomination cycle, majority party Democratic decision makers in Rhode Island did little to shake up the delegate selection process in the Ocean state for 2020. The date of the contest remained on the last Tuesday in April and other elements of the delegate selection plan stayed much the same as they were in 2016.
However, as with virtually every other state, Rhode Island had to adapt to the realities of the coronavirus pandemic. Like other states involved in the Acela primary regional primary -- Maryland and Pennsylvania among them -- Rhode Island also shifted its presidential primary election from April 28 to June 2. But the protocol the state adopted for dealing with the public health concerns around in-person voting wedged just in between where Maryland and Pennsylvania ended up. Whereas the state of Maryland sent all eligible voters a primary ballot and commonwealth of Pennsylvania opted not to do anything, Rhode Island decision makers chose to shift to a predominantly mail election. But unlike Maryland, Rhode Island mailed all eligible voters an absentee voting application rather than a ballot. Voters had until May 19 to apply.
In-person voting locations will continue to operate on election day, but will be reduced in number.
All mail-in ballots are due to state election office on or before 8pm on Tuesday, June 2.
Overall, the Democratic delegation in Rhode Island changed by three delegates from 2016 to 2020. The number of pledged delegates increased by two -- three district delegates gained and one at-large delegate lost -- while the number of superdelegates increased by one.
[Please see below for more on the post-coronavirus changes specifically to the delegate selection process.]
Thresholds
The standard 15 percent qualifying threshold applies both statewide and on the congressional district level.
Delegate allocation (at-large and PLEO delegates)
To win any at-large or PLEO (pledged Party Leader and Elected Officials) delegates a candidate must win 15 percent of the statewide vote. Only the votes of those candidates above the threshold will count for the purposes of the separate allocation of these two pools of delegates.
See New Hampshire synopsis for an example of how the delegate allocation math works for all categories of delegates.
Delegate allocation (congressional district delegates)
Rhode Island's 18 congressional district delegates are split across two congressional districts and have no variation across districts from the measure of Democratic strength Rhode Island Democrats are using based on the results of the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections in the state. That method apportions delegates as follows...
CD1 - 9 delegates*
CD2 - 9 delegates*
*Bear in mind that districts with odd numbers of national convention delegates are potentially important to winners (and those above the qualifying threshold) within those districts. Rounding up for an extra delegate initially requires less in those districts than in districts with even numbers of delegates.
Delegate allocation (automatic delegates/superdelegates)
Superdelegates are free to align with a candidate of their choice at a time of their choosing. While their support may be a signal to voters in their state (if an endorsement is made before voting in that state), superdelegates will only vote on the first ballot at the national convention if half of the total number of delegates -- pledged plus superdelegates -- have been pledged to one candidate. Otherwise, superdelegates are locked out of the voting unless 1) the convention adopts rules that allow them to vote or 2) the voting process extends to a second ballot. But then all delegates, not just superdelegates will be free to vote for any candidate.
[NOTE: All Democratic delegates are pledged and not bound to their candidates. They are to vote in good conscience for the candidate to whom they have been pledged, but technically do not have to. But they tend to because the candidates and their campaigns are involved in vetting and selecting their delegates through the various selection processes on the state level. Well, the good campaigns are anyway.]
Selection
Rhode Island, like a number of the other former Acela primary states, has a delegate selection process that is more insulated from the effects of the coronavirus than some others. That is mainly a function of the fact that the district delegate selection process is run through the primary itself. Those 18 district delegates are directly elected on the primary ballot. Yes, the primary date shifted from April 28 to June 2, but filing had already been completed before the coronavirus and there was no need for the selection process to be shifted online or to some vote-by-mail system as has been common in some other states.
While the district delegates will be selected as previously planned but on June 2, the process for the selection of the eight statewide delegates -- five at-large and three PLEO delegates -- was more disrupted. The Rhode Island Democratic Party State Committee will continue to be the body that selects the statewide delegates, but that process will now take place virtually rather than in-person and will happen on June 15 about a month later than was originally planned.
[Initially, Rhode Island's district delegates were to have been selected on the April 28 primary ballot and the statewide delegates on May 17 at a meeting of the state committee. The coronavirus shifted both back on the calendar.]
Importantly, if a candidate drops out of the race before the selection of statewide delegates, then any statewide delegates allocated to that candidate will be reallocated to the remaining candidates. If Candidate X is in the race in mid-June when the Rhode Island statewide delegate selection takes place but Candidate Y is not, then any statewide delegates allocated to Candidate Y in the early June primary would be reallocated to Candidate X. [This same feature is not something that applies to district delegates.] This reallocation only applies if a candidate has fully dropped out. This is less likely to be a factor with just Biden left as the only viable candidate in the race, but Sanders could still gain statewide delegates by finishing with more than 15 percent statewide. Under a new deal struck between the Biden and Sanders camps, Biden will be allocated (or reallocated) all of the statewide delegates in a given state. However, during the selection process, the state party will select Sanders-aligned delegate candidates in proportion to the share of the qualified statewide vote.
Election type: primary
Date: June 2
[April 28 originally]
Number of delegates: 35 [5 at-large, 3 PLEOs, 18 congressional district, 9 automatic/superdelegates]
Allocation method: proportional statewide and at the congressional district level
Threshold to qualify for delegates: 15%
2016: proportional primary
Delegate selection plan [includes post-coronavirus plans]
--
Changes since 2016
If one followed the 2016 series on the Republican process here at FHQ, then you may end up somewhat disappointed. The two national parties manage the presidential nomination process differently. The Republican National Committee is much less hands-on in regulating state and state party activity in the delegate selection process than the Democratic National Committee is. That leads to a lot of variation from state to state and from cycle to cycle on the Republican side. Meanwhile, the DNC is much more top down in its approach. Thresholds stay the same. It is a 15 percent barrier that candidates must cross in order to qualify for delegates. That is standard across all states. The allocation of delegates is roughly proportional. Again, that is applied to every state.
That does not mean there are no changes. The calendar has changed as have other facets of the process such as whether a state has a primary or a caucus.
Content to remain a part of the evolving regional primary collective that formed ahead of the 2012 presidential nomination cycle, majority party Democratic decision makers in Rhode Island did little to shake up the delegate selection process in the Ocean state for 2020. The date of the contest remained on the last Tuesday in April and other elements of the delegate selection plan stayed much the same as they were in 2016.
However, as with virtually every other state, Rhode Island had to adapt to the realities of the coronavirus pandemic. Like other states involved in the Acela primary regional primary -- Maryland and Pennsylvania among them -- Rhode Island also shifted its presidential primary election from April 28 to June 2. But the protocol the state adopted for dealing with the public health concerns around in-person voting wedged just in between where Maryland and Pennsylvania ended up. Whereas the state of Maryland sent all eligible voters a primary ballot and commonwealth of Pennsylvania opted not to do anything, Rhode Island decision makers chose to shift to a predominantly mail election. But unlike Maryland, Rhode Island mailed all eligible voters an absentee voting application rather than a ballot. Voters had until May 19 to apply.
In-person voting locations will continue to operate on election day, but will be reduced in number.
All mail-in ballots are due to state election office on or before 8pm on Tuesday, June 2.
Overall, the Democratic delegation in Rhode Island changed by three delegates from 2016 to 2020. The number of pledged delegates increased by two -- three district delegates gained and one at-large delegate lost -- while the number of superdelegates increased by one.
[Please see below for more on the post-coronavirus changes specifically to the delegate selection process.]
Thresholds
The standard 15 percent qualifying threshold applies both statewide and on the congressional district level.
Delegate allocation (at-large and PLEO delegates)
To win any at-large or PLEO (pledged Party Leader and Elected Officials) delegates a candidate must win 15 percent of the statewide vote. Only the votes of those candidates above the threshold will count for the purposes of the separate allocation of these two pools of delegates.
See New Hampshire synopsis for an example of how the delegate allocation math works for all categories of delegates.
Delegate allocation (congressional district delegates)
Rhode Island's 18 congressional district delegates are split across two congressional districts and have no variation across districts from the measure of Democratic strength Rhode Island Democrats are using based on the results of the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections in the state. That method apportions delegates as follows...
CD1 - 9 delegates*
CD2 - 9 delegates*
*Bear in mind that districts with odd numbers of national convention delegates are potentially important to winners (and those above the qualifying threshold) within those districts. Rounding up for an extra delegate initially requires less in those districts than in districts with even numbers of delegates.
Delegate allocation (automatic delegates/superdelegates)
Superdelegates are free to align with a candidate of their choice at a time of their choosing. While their support may be a signal to voters in their state (if an endorsement is made before voting in that state), superdelegates will only vote on the first ballot at the national convention if half of the total number of delegates -- pledged plus superdelegates -- have been pledged to one candidate. Otherwise, superdelegates are locked out of the voting unless 1) the convention adopts rules that allow them to vote or 2) the voting process extends to a second ballot. But then all delegates, not just superdelegates will be free to vote for any candidate.
[NOTE: All Democratic delegates are pledged and not bound to their candidates. They are to vote in good conscience for the candidate to whom they have been pledged, but technically do not have to. But they tend to because the candidates and their campaigns are involved in vetting and selecting their delegates through the various selection processes on the state level. Well, the good campaigns are anyway.]
Selection
Rhode Island, like a number of the other former Acela primary states, has a delegate selection process that is more insulated from the effects of the coronavirus than some others. That is mainly a function of the fact that the district delegate selection process is run through the primary itself. Those 18 district delegates are directly elected on the primary ballot. Yes, the primary date shifted from April 28 to June 2, but filing had already been completed before the coronavirus and there was no need for the selection process to be shifted online or to some vote-by-mail system as has been common in some other states.
While the district delegates will be selected as previously planned but on June 2, the process for the selection of the eight statewide delegates -- five at-large and three PLEO delegates -- was more disrupted. The Rhode Island Democratic Party State Committee will continue to be the body that selects the statewide delegates, but that process will now take place virtually rather than in-person and will happen on June 15 about a month later than was originally planned.
[Initially, Rhode Island's district delegates were to have been selected on the April 28 primary ballot and the statewide delegates on May 17 at a meeting of the state committee. The coronavirus shifted both back on the calendar.]
Importantly, if a candidate drops out of the race before the selection of statewide delegates, then any statewide delegates allocated to that candidate will be reallocated to the remaining candidates. If Candidate X is in the race in mid-June when the Rhode Island statewide delegate selection takes place but Candidate Y is not, then any statewide delegates allocated to Candidate Y in the early June primary would be reallocated to Candidate X. [This same feature is not something that applies to district delegates.] This reallocation only applies if a candidate has fully dropped out. This is less likely to be a factor with just Biden left as the only viable candidate in the race, but Sanders could still gain statewide delegates by finishing with more than 15 percent statewide. Under a new deal struck between the Biden and Sanders camps, Biden will be allocated (or reallocated) all of the statewide delegates in a given state. However, during the selection process, the state party will select Sanders-aligned delegate candidates in proportion to the share of the qualified statewide vote.
Sunday, May 24, 2020
**UPDATED** 2020 Democratic Delegate Allocation: PENNSYLVANIA
PENNSYLVANIA
Election type: primary
Date: June 2
[April 28 originally]
Number of delegates: 210 [41 at-large, 20 PLEOs, 125 congressional district, 24 automatic/superdelegates]
Allocation method: proportional statewide and at the congressional district level
Threshold to qualify for delegates: 15%
2016: proportional primary
Delegate selection plan [includes post-coronavirus plans]
--
Changes since 2016
If one followed the 2016 series on the Republican process here at FHQ, then you may end up somewhat disappointed. The two national parties manage the presidential nomination process differently. The Republican National Committee is much less hands-on in regulating state and state party activity in the delegate selection process than the Democratic National Committee is. That leads to a lot of variation from state to state and from cycle to cycle on the Republican side. Meanwhile, the DNC is much more top down in its approach. Thresholds stay the same. It is a 15 percent barrier that candidates must cross in order to qualify for delegates. That is standard across all states. The allocation of delegates is roughly proportional. Again, that is applied to every state.
That does not mean there are no changes. The calendar has changed as have other facets of the process such as whether a state has a primary or a caucus.
For much of the post-reform era, the consolidated primary in Pennsylvania has occupied the final Tuesday in April spot on the primary calendar. Only once has the state strayed from that date and that was two decades ago in 2000. Even then, the move was only up a few weeks to the first Tuesday in April (in an era when most states that moved were pushing into March).
But that changed once the coronavirus pushed itself into the 2020 electoral landscape. Like all the other Acela primary states that had carved out that late April calendar position for a regional primary among themselves, Pennsylvania decision makers opted to move the primary back in the interest of public health. And like Maryland and Rhode Island (and initially Connecticut and Delaware before each moved a second time), the primary in the Keystone state ended up on June 2. This will be the latest position Pennsylvania has occupied on the presidential primary calendar in the post-reform era.
Unlike Maryland and Rhode Island, Pennsylvania made no effort to move to an all-mail election on that date. Elections officials in some Pennsylvania counties pushed for that change, but it was never enacted. What did change between 2016 and 2020 in Pennsylvania election administration was the introduction of no-excuse absentee voting. And that has been pushed since the breakout of the pandemic. Voters, in turn, are responding.
All mail-in ballots are due to county elections offices locations on or before 8pm on Tuesday, June 2 for most counties throughout the commonwealth. **UPDATE (6/1/20): Governor Wolf (D) will issue an executive order extending the due date for absentee ballots in some counties for the primary to Tuesday, June 9. All mail-in ballots will be due to county elections offices by 8pm on Tuesday, June 9.**
Overall, the Democratic delegation in Pennsylvania did not change at all from 2016 to 2020. However, the number of pledged delegates decreased by three -- two district delegates and one at-large delegate -- while the number of superdelegates increased by three.
[Please see below for more on the post-coronavirus changes specifically to the delegate selection process.]
Thresholds
The standard 15 percent qualifying threshold applies both statewide and on the congressional district level.
Delegate allocation (at-large and PLEO delegates)
To win any at-large or PLEO (pledged Party Leader and Elected Officials) delegates a candidate must win 15 percent of the statewide vote. Only the votes of those candidates above the threshold will count for the purposes of the separate allocation of these two pools of delegates.
See New Hampshire synopsis for an example of how the delegate allocation math works for all categories of delegates.
Delegate allocation (congressional district delegates)
Pennsylvania's 125 congressional district delegates are split across 18 congressional districts and have a variation of 10 delegates across districts from the measure of Democratic strength Pennsylvania Democrats are using based on the results of the 2016 presidential and 2018 gubernatorial elections in the state. That method apportions delegates as follows...
CD1 - 8 delegates
CD2 - 8 delegates
CD3 - 14 delegates
CD4 - 10 delegates
CD5 - 9 delegates*
CD6 - 8 delegates
CD7 - 7 delegates*
CD8 - 6 delegates
CD9 - 4 delegates
CD10 - 7 delegates*
CD11 - 5 delegates*
CD12 - 4 delegates
CD13 - 4 delegates
CD14 - 5 delegates*
CD15 - 4 delegates
CD16 - 5 delegates*
CD17 - 8 delegates
CD18 - 9 delegates*
*Bear in mind that districts with odd numbers of national convention delegates are potentially important to winners (and those above the qualifying threshold) within those districts. Rounding up for an extra delegate initially requires less in those districts than in districts with even numbers of delegates. The 10 delegate variation among congressional districts is among the largest in the country.
Delegate allocation (automatic delegates/superdelegates)
Superdelegates are free to align with a candidate of their choice at a time of their choosing. While their support may be a signal to voters in their state (if an endorsement is made before voting in that state), superdelegates will only vote on the first ballot at the national convention if half of the total number of delegates -- pledged plus superdelegates -- have been pledged to one candidate. Otherwise, superdelegates are locked out of the voting unless 1) the convention adopts rules that allow them to vote or 2) the voting process extends to a second ballot. But then all delegates, not just superdelegates will be free to vote for any candidate.
[NOTE: All Democratic delegates are pledged and not bound to their candidates. They are to vote in good conscience for the candidate to whom they have been pledged, but technically do not have to. But they tend to because the candidates and their campaigns are involved in vetting and selecting their delegates through the various selection processes on the state level. Well, the good campaigns are anyway.]
Selection
The selection of Pennsylvania's 125 district delegates was not really affected by the advent of the coronavirus. They are all directly elected on the presidential primary ballot. All that happened was that the date of selection shifted from April 28 to June 2 when the primary date was changed. PLEO and at-large delegate selection was also similarly impacted. Although those statewide delegates are not on the ballot, their time of selection was pushed back about a month from June 13 to sometime before July 18. The Democratic State Committee will continue to be the body that selects those two groups of pledged delegates. As of this writing, it is not specified whether that committee meeting will take place virtually or in person, but that section of the delegate selection plan reads like the meeting will take place in person. However, those plans would seemingly hinge on where things stand with the coronavirus.
[Initially, Pennsylvania's district delegates were to have been selected on the April 28 primary ballot and the statewide delegates on June 13 at a meeting of the state central committee. The coronavirus shifted both back on the calendar.]
Importantly, if a candidate drops out of the race before the selection of statewide delegates, then any statewide delegates allocated to that candidate will be reallocated to the remaining candidates. If Candidate X is in the race in mid-July when the Pennsylvania statewide delegate selection takes place but Candidate Y is not, then any statewide delegates allocated to Candidate Y in the early June primary would be reallocated to Candidate X. [This same feature is not something that applies to district delegates.] This reallocation only applies if a candidate has fully dropped out. This is less likely to be a factor with just Biden left as the only viable candidate in the race, but Sanders could still gain statewide delegates by finishing with more than 15 percent statewide. Under a new deal struck between the Biden and Sanders camps, Biden will be allocated (or reallocated) all of the statewide delegates in a given state. However, during the selection process, the state party will select Sanders-aligned delegate candidates in proportion to the share of the qualified statewide vote.
Election type: primary
Date: June 2
[April 28 originally]
Number of delegates: 210 [41 at-large, 20 PLEOs, 125 congressional district, 24 automatic/superdelegates]
Allocation method: proportional statewide and at the congressional district level
Threshold to qualify for delegates: 15%
2016: proportional primary
Delegate selection plan [includes post-coronavirus plans]
--
Changes since 2016
If one followed the 2016 series on the Republican process here at FHQ, then you may end up somewhat disappointed. The two national parties manage the presidential nomination process differently. The Republican National Committee is much less hands-on in regulating state and state party activity in the delegate selection process than the Democratic National Committee is. That leads to a lot of variation from state to state and from cycle to cycle on the Republican side. Meanwhile, the DNC is much more top down in its approach. Thresholds stay the same. It is a 15 percent barrier that candidates must cross in order to qualify for delegates. That is standard across all states. The allocation of delegates is roughly proportional. Again, that is applied to every state.
That does not mean there are no changes. The calendar has changed as have other facets of the process such as whether a state has a primary or a caucus.
For much of the post-reform era, the consolidated primary in Pennsylvania has occupied the final Tuesday in April spot on the primary calendar. Only once has the state strayed from that date and that was two decades ago in 2000. Even then, the move was only up a few weeks to the first Tuesday in April (in an era when most states that moved were pushing into March).
But that changed once the coronavirus pushed itself into the 2020 electoral landscape. Like all the other Acela primary states that had carved out that late April calendar position for a regional primary among themselves, Pennsylvania decision makers opted to move the primary back in the interest of public health. And like Maryland and Rhode Island (and initially Connecticut and Delaware before each moved a second time), the primary in the Keystone state ended up on June 2. This will be the latest position Pennsylvania has occupied on the presidential primary calendar in the post-reform era.
Unlike Maryland and Rhode Island, Pennsylvania made no effort to move to an all-mail election on that date. Elections officials in some Pennsylvania counties pushed for that change, but it was never enacted. What did change between 2016 and 2020 in Pennsylvania election administration was the introduction of no-excuse absentee voting. And that has been pushed since the breakout of the pandemic. Voters, in turn, are responding.
All mail-in ballots are due to county elections offices locations on or before 8pm on Tuesday, June 2 for most counties throughout the commonwealth. **UPDATE (6/1/20): Governor Wolf (D) will issue an executive order extending the due date for absentee ballots in some counties for the primary to Tuesday, June 9. All mail-in ballots will be due to county elections offices by 8pm on Tuesday, June 9.**
Overall, the Democratic delegation in Pennsylvania did not change at all from 2016 to 2020. However, the number of pledged delegates decreased by three -- two district delegates and one at-large delegate -- while the number of superdelegates increased by three.
[Please see below for more on the post-coronavirus changes specifically to the delegate selection process.]
Thresholds
The standard 15 percent qualifying threshold applies both statewide and on the congressional district level.
Delegate allocation (at-large and PLEO delegates)
To win any at-large or PLEO (pledged Party Leader and Elected Officials) delegates a candidate must win 15 percent of the statewide vote. Only the votes of those candidates above the threshold will count for the purposes of the separate allocation of these two pools of delegates.
See New Hampshire synopsis for an example of how the delegate allocation math works for all categories of delegates.
Delegate allocation (congressional district delegates)
Pennsylvania's 125 congressional district delegates are split across 18 congressional districts and have a variation of 10 delegates across districts from the measure of Democratic strength Pennsylvania Democrats are using based on the results of the 2016 presidential and 2018 gubernatorial elections in the state. That method apportions delegates as follows...
CD1 - 8 delegates
CD2 - 8 delegates
CD3 - 14 delegates
CD4 - 10 delegates
CD5 - 9 delegates*
CD6 - 8 delegates
CD7 - 7 delegates*
CD8 - 6 delegates
CD9 - 4 delegates
CD10 - 7 delegates*
CD11 - 5 delegates*
CD12 - 4 delegates
CD13 - 4 delegates
CD14 - 5 delegates*
CD15 - 4 delegates
CD16 - 5 delegates*
CD17 - 8 delegates
CD18 - 9 delegates*
*Bear in mind that districts with odd numbers of national convention delegates are potentially important to winners (and those above the qualifying threshold) within those districts. Rounding up for an extra delegate initially requires less in those districts than in districts with even numbers of delegates. The 10 delegate variation among congressional districts is among the largest in the country.
Delegate allocation (automatic delegates/superdelegates)
Superdelegates are free to align with a candidate of their choice at a time of their choosing. While their support may be a signal to voters in their state (if an endorsement is made before voting in that state), superdelegates will only vote on the first ballot at the national convention if half of the total number of delegates -- pledged plus superdelegates -- have been pledged to one candidate. Otherwise, superdelegates are locked out of the voting unless 1) the convention adopts rules that allow them to vote or 2) the voting process extends to a second ballot. But then all delegates, not just superdelegates will be free to vote for any candidate.
[NOTE: All Democratic delegates are pledged and not bound to their candidates. They are to vote in good conscience for the candidate to whom they have been pledged, but technically do not have to. But they tend to because the candidates and their campaigns are involved in vetting and selecting their delegates through the various selection processes on the state level. Well, the good campaigns are anyway.]
Selection
The selection of Pennsylvania's 125 district delegates was not really affected by the advent of the coronavirus. They are all directly elected on the presidential primary ballot. All that happened was that the date of selection shifted from April 28 to June 2 when the primary date was changed. PLEO and at-large delegate selection was also similarly impacted. Although those statewide delegates are not on the ballot, their time of selection was pushed back about a month from June 13 to sometime before July 18. The Democratic State Committee will continue to be the body that selects those two groups of pledged delegates. As of this writing, it is not specified whether that committee meeting will take place virtually or in person, but that section of the delegate selection plan reads like the meeting will take place in person. However, those plans would seemingly hinge on where things stand with the coronavirus.
[Initially, Pennsylvania's district delegates were to have been selected on the April 28 primary ballot and the statewide delegates on June 13 at a meeting of the state central committee. The coronavirus shifted both back on the calendar.]
Importantly, if a candidate drops out of the race before the selection of statewide delegates, then any statewide delegates allocated to that candidate will be reallocated to the remaining candidates. If Candidate X is in the race in mid-July when the Pennsylvania statewide delegate selection takes place but Candidate Y is not, then any statewide delegates allocated to Candidate Y in the early June primary would be reallocated to Candidate X. [This same feature is not something that applies to district delegates.] This reallocation only applies if a candidate has fully dropped out. This is less likely to be a factor with just Biden left as the only viable candidate in the race, but Sanders could still gain statewide delegates by finishing with more than 15 percent statewide. Under a new deal struck between the Biden and Sanders camps, Biden will be allocated (or reallocated) all of the statewide delegates in a given state. However, during the selection process, the state party will select Sanders-aligned delegate candidates in proportion to the share of the qualified statewide vote.
Saturday, May 23, 2020
2020 Democratic Delegate Allocation: NEW MEXICO
NEW MEXICO
Election type: primary
Date: June 2
Number of delegates: 46 [7 at-large, 4 PLEOs, 23 congressional district, 12 automatic/superdelegates]
Allocation method: proportional statewide and at the congressional district level
Threshold to qualify for delegates: 15%
2016: proportional primary
Delegate selection plan [includes post-coronavirus plans]
--
Changes since 2016
If one followed the 2016 series on the Republican process here at FHQ, then you may end up somewhat disappointed. The two national parties manage the presidential nomination process differently. The Republican National Committee is much less hands-on in regulating state and state party activity in the delegate selection process than the Democratic National Committee is. That leads to a lot of variation from state to state and from cycle to cycle on the Republican side. Meanwhile, the DNC is much more top down in its approach. Thresholds stay the same. It is a 15 percent barrier that candidates must cross in order to qualify for delegates. That is standard across all states. The allocation of delegates is roughly proportional. Again, that is applied to every state.
That does not mean there are no changes. The calendar has changed as have other facets of the process such as whether a state has a primary or a caucus.
For the third straight cycle, New Mexico Democrats will occupy what has historically been the typical spot for the consolidated primary in the Land of Enchantment: the first Tuesday after the first Monday in June. There was no change to the date of the contest nor any effort to push the primary to an earlier date.
There also was very little movement with respect to the state party's delegate selection plan for 2020. And that was true at least until the coronavirus pandemic hit. After that, there were some fairly significant tweaks to the process if not the plan. County clerks and the New Mexico secretary of state petitioned the state courts to allow an all-mail primary on June 2. But that request was denied based on state law that requires voters to formally apply fo an absentee ballot. However, the judge did allow absentee ballot applications to be sent to every New Mexico voter registered with a major party, a process that began in late April.
May 28 is the last day for voters to request an absentee ballot. In-person early and in-person election day voting will continue to be offered under the court ruling but will occur under the conditions set forth in the public health proclamations issued by the governor according to the court decision.
All ballots are due to county elections offices locations on or before 7pm on Tuesday, June 2.
Overall, the Democratic delegation in New Mexico changed by just two delegates from 2016 to 2020. The number of pledged delegates stayed the same in all three categories but the number of superdelegates rose by two.
[Please see below for more on the post-coronavirus changes specifically to the delegate selection process.]
Thresholds
The standard 15 percent qualifying threshold applies both statewide and on the congressional district level.
Delegate allocation (at-large and PLEO delegates)
To win any at-large or PLEO (pledged Party Leader and Elected Officials) delegates a candidate must win 15 percent of the statewide vote. Only the votes of those candidates above the threshold will count for the purposes of the separate allocation of these two pools of delegates.
See New Hampshire synopsis for an example of how the delegate allocation math works for all categories of delegates.
Delegate allocation (congressional district delegates)
New Mexico's 23 congressional district delegates are split across eight congressional districts and have a variation of just two delegates across districts from the measure of Democratic strength New Mexico Democrats are using based on the results of the 2016 presidential and 2018 gubernatorial elections in the state. That method apportions delegates as follows...
CD1 - 9 delegates*
CD2 - 5 delegates*
CD3 - 9 delegates*
*Bear in mind that districts with odd numbers of national convention delegates are potentially important to winners (and those above the qualifying threshold) within those districts. Rounding up for an extra delegate initially requires less in those districts than in districts with even numbers of delegates.
Delegate allocation (automatic delegates/superdelegates)
Superdelegates are free to align with a candidate of their choice at a time of their choosing. While their support may be a signal to voters in their state (if an endorsement is made before voting in that state), superdelegates will only vote on the first ballot at the national convention if half of the total number of delegates -- pledged plus superdelegates -- have been pledged to one candidate. Otherwise, superdelegates are locked out of the voting unless 1) the convention adopts rules that allow them to vote or 2) the voting process extends to a second ballot. But then all delegates, not just superdelegates will be free to vote for any candidate.
[NOTE: All Democratic delegates are pledged and not bound to their candidates. They are to vote in good conscience for the candidate to whom they have been pledged, but technically do not have to. But they tend to because the candidates and their campaigns are involved in vetting and selecting their delegates through the various selection processes on the state level. Well, the good campaigns are anyway.]
Selection
The selection of the 23 district delegates in New Mexico will occur on June 13 in virtual post-primary district conventions. Democrats registered by May 5 and who reside in a congressional district can register with the state party to participate as "qualified post-primary electors" in those district conventions. The state party staff will then verify the credentials of those who register to be "electors."
Those same "qualified post-primary electors" will vote again on June 19 in the first part of a virtual state convention to select the four PLEO delegates. The second part of that virtual state convention will take place a day later on June 20 to select the seven at-large delegates.
[The coronavirus pandemic forced New Mexico Democrats to significantly truncate their delegate selection process. Initially, the party planned on a four step caucus/convention process. That was to have started with in-person ward/precinct meetings on June 3-6 where county convention delegates would be selected. The county conventions on June 6 were to have elected delegates to both the in-person district and state conventions on June 13 and June 20, respectively. Only those who had been elected to the county conventions could participate in the votes to send delegates to the district and state conventions. Only those who had been elected to the district and state conventions could vote on national convention delegates. Now that the coronavirus has intervened, the some of those steps have been removed and conceivably the pool of participants in electing national convention delegates has expanded. The gatekeeping of the ward/precinct and county meetings has been replaced by the state party verifying who can participate in the votes on national convention delegates based on who applies.]
Importantly, if a candidate drops out of the race before the selection of statewide delegates, then any statewide delegates allocated to that candidate will be reallocated to the remaining candidates. If Candidate X is in the race in mid- to late June when the New Mexico statewide delegate selection takes place but Candidate Y is not, then any statewide delegates allocated to Candidate Y in the early June primary would be reallocated to Candidate X. [This same feature is not something that applies to district delegates.] This reallocation only applies if a candidate has fully dropped out. This is less likely to be a factor with just Biden left as the only viable candidate in the race, but Sanders could still gain statewide delegates by finishing with more than 15 percent statewide. Under a new deal struck between the Biden and Sanders camps, Biden will be allocated (or reallocated) all of the statewide delegates in a given state. However, during the selection process, the state party will select Sanders-aligned delegate candidates in proportion to the share of the qualified statewide vote.
Election type: primary
Date: June 2
Number of delegates: 46 [7 at-large, 4 PLEOs, 23 congressional district, 12 automatic/superdelegates]
Allocation method: proportional statewide and at the congressional district level
Threshold to qualify for delegates: 15%
2016: proportional primary
Delegate selection plan [includes post-coronavirus plans]
--
Changes since 2016
If one followed the 2016 series on the Republican process here at FHQ, then you may end up somewhat disappointed. The two national parties manage the presidential nomination process differently. The Republican National Committee is much less hands-on in regulating state and state party activity in the delegate selection process than the Democratic National Committee is. That leads to a lot of variation from state to state and from cycle to cycle on the Republican side. Meanwhile, the DNC is much more top down in its approach. Thresholds stay the same. It is a 15 percent barrier that candidates must cross in order to qualify for delegates. That is standard across all states. The allocation of delegates is roughly proportional. Again, that is applied to every state.
That does not mean there are no changes. The calendar has changed as have other facets of the process such as whether a state has a primary or a caucus.
For the third straight cycle, New Mexico Democrats will occupy what has historically been the typical spot for the consolidated primary in the Land of Enchantment: the first Tuesday after the first Monday in June. There was no change to the date of the contest nor any effort to push the primary to an earlier date.
There also was very little movement with respect to the state party's delegate selection plan for 2020. And that was true at least until the coronavirus pandemic hit. After that, there were some fairly significant tweaks to the process if not the plan. County clerks and the New Mexico secretary of state petitioned the state courts to allow an all-mail primary on June 2. But that request was denied based on state law that requires voters to formally apply fo an absentee ballot. However, the judge did allow absentee ballot applications to be sent to every New Mexico voter registered with a major party, a process that began in late April.
May 28 is the last day for voters to request an absentee ballot. In-person early and in-person election day voting will continue to be offered under the court ruling but will occur under the conditions set forth in the public health proclamations issued by the governor according to the court decision.
All ballots are due to county elections offices locations on or before 7pm on Tuesday, June 2.
Overall, the Democratic delegation in New Mexico changed by just two delegates from 2016 to 2020. The number of pledged delegates stayed the same in all three categories but the number of superdelegates rose by two.
[Please see below for more on the post-coronavirus changes specifically to the delegate selection process.]
Thresholds
The standard 15 percent qualifying threshold applies both statewide and on the congressional district level.
Delegate allocation (at-large and PLEO delegates)
To win any at-large or PLEO (pledged Party Leader and Elected Officials) delegates a candidate must win 15 percent of the statewide vote. Only the votes of those candidates above the threshold will count for the purposes of the separate allocation of these two pools of delegates.
See New Hampshire synopsis for an example of how the delegate allocation math works for all categories of delegates.
Delegate allocation (congressional district delegates)
New Mexico's 23 congressional district delegates are split across eight congressional districts and have a variation of just two delegates across districts from the measure of Democratic strength New Mexico Democrats are using based on the results of the 2016 presidential and 2018 gubernatorial elections in the state. That method apportions delegates as follows...
CD1 - 9 delegates*
CD2 - 5 delegates*
CD3 - 9 delegates*
*Bear in mind that districts with odd numbers of national convention delegates are potentially important to winners (and those above the qualifying threshold) within those districts. Rounding up for an extra delegate initially requires less in those districts than in districts with even numbers of delegates.
Delegate allocation (automatic delegates/superdelegates)
Superdelegates are free to align with a candidate of their choice at a time of their choosing. While their support may be a signal to voters in their state (if an endorsement is made before voting in that state), superdelegates will only vote on the first ballot at the national convention if half of the total number of delegates -- pledged plus superdelegates -- have been pledged to one candidate. Otherwise, superdelegates are locked out of the voting unless 1) the convention adopts rules that allow them to vote or 2) the voting process extends to a second ballot. But then all delegates, not just superdelegates will be free to vote for any candidate.
[NOTE: All Democratic delegates are pledged and not bound to their candidates. They are to vote in good conscience for the candidate to whom they have been pledged, but technically do not have to. But they tend to because the candidates and their campaigns are involved in vetting and selecting their delegates through the various selection processes on the state level. Well, the good campaigns are anyway.]
Selection
The selection of the 23 district delegates in New Mexico will occur on June 13 in virtual post-primary district conventions. Democrats registered by May 5 and who reside in a congressional district can register with the state party to participate as "qualified post-primary electors" in those district conventions. The state party staff will then verify the credentials of those who register to be "electors."
Those same "qualified post-primary electors" will vote again on June 19 in the first part of a virtual state convention to select the four PLEO delegates. The second part of that virtual state convention will take place a day later on June 20 to select the seven at-large delegates.
[The coronavirus pandemic forced New Mexico Democrats to significantly truncate their delegate selection process. Initially, the party planned on a four step caucus/convention process. That was to have started with in-person ward/precinct meetings on June 3-6 where county convention delegates would be selected. The county conventions on June 6 were to have elected delegates to both the in-person district and state conventions on June 13 and June 20, respectively. Only those who had been elected to the county conventions could participate in the votes to send delegates to the district and state conventions. Only those who had been elected to the district and state conventions could vote on national convention delegates. Now that the coronavirus has intervened, the some of those steps have been removed and conceivably the pool of participants in electing national convention delegates has expanded. The gatekeeping of the ward/precinct and county meetings has been replaced by the state party verifying who can participate in the votes on national convention delegates based on who applies.]
Importantly, if a candidate drops out of the race before the selection of statewide delegates, then any statewide delegates allocated to that candidate will be reallocated to the remaining candidates. If Candidate X is in the race in mid- to late June when the New Mexico statewide delegate selection takes place but Candidate Y is not, then any statewide delegates allocated to Candidate Y in the early June primary would be reallocated to Candidate X. [This same feature is not something that applies to district delegates.] This reallocation only applies if a candidate has fully dropped out. This is less likely to be a factor with just Biden left as the only viable candidate in the race, but Sanders could still gain statewide delegates by finishing with more than 15 percent statewide. Under a new deal struck between the Biden and Sanders camps, Biden will be allocated (or reallocated) all of the statewide delegates in a given state. However, during the selection process, the state party will select Sanders-aligned delegate candidates in proportion to the share of the qualified statewide vote.
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